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My first impression? Where have you been all my life and if you wore a skirt, I’d marry you! LOL. I have never used an iPad let alone owned one so, this is all quite fascinating to me. I am finding it necessary to adjust my expectations as I make the inevitable comparisons to my Windows based P.C. and netbook. I did buy a Snugg case for it on Amazon and it took forever to get and I paid for expedited shipping. The case is nice (and does have the magnetic “on” function that Apple touts with their own cover) but, I would not recommend their seller, Charon International.
What I like …
- Blazing fast and instant on! Great battery life.
- The user interface is very intuitive.
- I love the email although setting it up for Google Apps was challenging and I did need to do some research. I first set it up using Gmail and that worked great but my contacts did not come across. You actually need to set it up using “exchange” vs. Gmail but then … it seems to be bullet proof!
- It quickly and seamlessly imported my music from iTunes.
- Great selection of apps. More to follow on that.
What I find challenging …
- I miss my mouse
- Copy and paste is a huge pain in the butt. Actually, paste is easy but you still have to select what to copy.
- After using Chrome and Firefox … Safari is difficult to get used to particularly with the lack of extensions. There are workarounds but I rely heavily on things like LastPass and, while there is an app available, it does not interface with Safari directly.
- Some of the websites I frequent do not work properly on an iPad and I am not talking about flash support. For example, some actually need a mouse for when you hover over a selection to reveal other options.
My Favorite Apps (thus far) …
- Not really an app but the email interface does rock!
- HootSuite – My Social Network client of choice. Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, FaceBook Pages all rolled into one. I did have one challenge and that was that I am in love with the Hootlet and it is technically not supported by the iPad app. However, if you are using the Hootlet in Windows, go to your bookmarklet and copy the javascript code and insert that as the URL in a bookmark that you set up in Safari and it does work. The only challenge is that it is over sized for the iPad screen and I have not be able to figure out a way to make it smaller and, believe me, I have tried.
- Twitter – The Twitter app is actually quite nice!
- Friendly – A very nice app for FaceBook.
- Pulse News or FlipBoard – Both of these are very nice and both allow you to grab the RSS feeds off of just about anything you want including your Google Reader. Both will allow you to share to your social networks. I do find myself leaning toward FlipBoard.
- Pandora – Love Pandora!
- DropBox – What’s not to like about Dropbox particularly when the iPad doesn’t have any usb ports. My DropBox syncs my files between my desktop, a laptop, a netbook, my BlackBerry, and now my iPad. Sweet!
All of the apps I mentioned are available in the Apps Store and all are free. Did somebody say “free”? O.K., I like that too!
Thanks for visiting!
Craig
Related articles
- Bing Launches A Killer iPad App (searchengineland.com)
- App Attack: Some of Our Favorite Downloads (ogilvypr.com)
- iPad Apps I actually use (mfinocchiaro.wordpress.com)
- Showyou iPad app is like Flipboard for videos (intomobile.com)
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. NetWorks! Boise Valley is a business to business networking organization for the most serious sales and marketing professionals only.
