My iPad is here!

[SoupDragon]

Filly charged??? Neigh! I meant fully.

Have now purchased MondoSolitaire as I do love a card game.

I charge mine in the morning... played pretty much solidly yesterday (game heavy rather than internet heavy) and well into the evening. Got down to 52% by this morning ready to charge again. So I think the battery life is pretty damn decent. Appears to fall quite quickly at first which is a bit scary

One thing worth knowing is that sync to computer charges MUCH slower than using the plug in the wall. So I've started to sync it first thing, then transfer it to the power socket - took about an hour and a bit to charge up from the 52%-100%.

Though I do have Solebon solitaire on the iphone - do all the iPhone apps automatically work?

They do work but in a weeny iPhone sized screen in the middle of the pad. You can magnify this but it blurs a bit.

When i synch mine, is says "not charging" so I always charge it via a socket.

Some do but only in a teeny window, others are ipad compatible as well - look in your iphone app directory - should group them accordingly.

Thank you - it's very useful having you two a couple of days ahead on this!

Appropriately, the first video I'm watching on it is the Clangers....

Do you think you're going to use the iBookstore? or if you already are - what do you think of the books themselves? What sort of thing are you getting? .,,, oh can't wait to get to work on Thursday, I guess that means our office one will be there too!!

Have just downloaded the complete diary of Samuel Pepys - free! - though it's the Gutenberg out-of-copyright 1893 version & therefore the 'cleaned up' one - still, not bad for free!

I'm disappointed at the price of the books TBH. Given there are no printing costs.

SD, I think publishers are going to be pretty careful with pricing of e-books generally. I too wish the prices would be more comparable to the sorts of deals you get nowadays for downloading music - there's plenty of places cheaper than iTunes' 79 p per track - but it has taken a bit of time to get to that stage.

Also, although no print costs are involved, there are various other costs - there's still the editorial & production costs, the author royalties, marketing and so on. In addition, the store itself will potentially take a biggish cut. I hope these things will sort themselves out, but I wouldn't expect the prices to dip significantly below the print copy prices for a while yet, if that.

The thing I'd like is if it was possible to 'rip' books & turn them into electronic versions as easily as it was possible to do with CDs. Fat chance of that though! Shame - I've got loads of old books at home, at least some of which I'd be quite happy to only have in virtual versions.

Oh, i agree about the unliklihood of bargain prices. A downloaded cd is not really cheaper than an actual cd. However, for that price, I'd prefer a real paper book, even though I'm not bothered about not having a cd... Odd

There are definitely books I'd be quite happy to have as just virtual versions and not real paper books - am currently trying to wade through a bunch of old books that I've kept in the vague thought I might want to re-read them in future years! (I do re-read books a lot, but have also hoarded too many, too.) If it's an airport read type book, I've got to the stage where I'd rather not have a paper book that then probably has to be got rid of because it's taking up physical space... but that doesn't apply to everything by any means.

I'm getting Guttenberg books until I can decide what I think of ebooks on the ipad.

I love paper books, but have NO storage, and I hate giving away books. Plus I do like reading (newspapers, RSS feed, magazines) on the ipad - so it would seem ebooks would be ideal. I'm just still on the fence though.

Perhaps if I actually read my way through the 20 or so paper books sat on my "to be read" shelf, may of which I got given 3 christmases ago, then I could justify buying an ebook :D

I think the CD / book thing is that you'd rip a CD onto your computer for your mp3 player ANYWAY, so a physical CD or virtual CD makes no difference.

The paper book/e book are two different end user experiences, so it's a different situation.

Where I struggle is with DVDs. I tend to rip DVDs to watch on computer, but I don't have the storage space to have my ENTIRE collection. So I'm still tending towards having the physical disk at the moment, but I can see that changing once a) we have a system that would hook up to the TV if we wanted to watch it there and b) storage space becomes massive (and massively cheap!)

DH thought you might like this - a cunning trick for printing from an ipad...

It is soooo pretty. Soooo sleek and I have spent hours on multi map alone. The difference compared to my net book and laptop is overwhelming

The pages whizzzzz past...and do a teeny bounce. Fabulous

RubberDuck - It was the battery life aspect which made me wonder about doing markup on a 70k draft.

In years gone by I've seen students in tears because of a corruption where the latter portion of some final report has been lost (more likely corrupted) and they have just a few days to complete it.

I know the iPad has SSD storage but don't know what effects you might have if the battery ran down dramatically while you went for a coffee or were on the phone and didn't see it happening.

Can understand not wanting to print it or get marker pen all over the place, just don't trust things on battery that much. However it isn't how I make a living, and I run with laptops on trickle charge so they will continue even if we have a mains fail (several UPS on my shopping list to keep things running for an hour or two in future power outages).

"if the battery ran down dramatically while you went for a coffee or were on the phone and didn't see it happening."

I don't see how that would be possible. You are warned at 20% remaining and it doesn't run down that quickly - especially if it is on auto dim when not touched for however long. Unless you have a complete battery failure you'd have to have stuffed up somewhere to have it go flat, in which case you can't really blame the technology.

But that is where the long power cable comes in I guess. It's a tempting accessory purchase.

Well I used it for near normal usage yesterday (i.e. wasn't on it every goddamn minute of the day, but did check in to We Rule and Godfinger every hour or so, read my RSS feeds in the evening and played a bit of Plants vs Zombies in bed while listening to two episodes of the Archers). It's down to 83%. That sucker ain't going down fast. Work on text would be much less intensive on the battery than the games, too.

I really would notice

Am beginning to believe their 10 hr battery life - it's not far off, certainly, and may even be a little more.

Oh - btw, re: "ripping" books to computer. In the US, Amazon have started doing a scheme on some of their books that if you bought the paperback version from them, you get the virtual version free.

I hope it takes off and gets them extra business so that they bring that feature to the UK.

It's perfect for using in bed - doesn't get hot, no ventilation to clog up because it's used on a soft surface, can prop it on the duvet at a nice angle.

I had it charging all night on the floor by the bed & just picked it up as soon as I woke up & I'm still here -fortunately it's half term (I work in a school) but I foresee problems next week when I have to be up by 7.30...

Just discovered it has a retrospective spellchecker as well as the predictive one that's on the iPhone - very useful.

I do wish the apostrophe was on the first screen though. Maybe they should make the keyboard customisable, so you can choose which punctuation is on the main screen -I'd have the apostrophe rather than the comma.

Rubberduck - I need neighbours on WeRule and GOdfinger. Sob I have no friends. I was devastated this morning when my crops were ruined.

I took the plunge and put on a Zagg invisible shield. It has lost some of it's sleekness as now feels a little tacky, but I was getting so stressed with the children. I feel happier knowing it can't get scratched now.

I'm finding battery life quite good. Yesterday I was down to 50% at the end of the day. It had quite a heavy bashing from me on the Internet and youngest 2 could't stop playing Sneezies. I'm still in love!