Europe first impressions

[PHartnett]

To stop the delivery threads filling up with people talking about the 'magical' device, what's everybody's first impressions! Love? Hate? Buyers remorse? Total insane euphoria?

Just to say, I really love mine, so far no issues with dead pixels or tinting, feel pretty lucky.

How about everybody else?

 

[LondonGooner]

To stop the delivery threads filling up with people talking about the 'magical' device, what's everybody's first impressions! Love? Hate? Buyers remorse? Total insane euphoria?

Just to say, I really love mine, so far no issues with dead pixels or tinting, feel pretty lucky.

How about everybody else?

Exactly how I imagined it, a brilliant device.
Only problem for me at the moment is I can't put apps on it from iTunes till tomorrow, which is irritating (unless I do it direct on the iPad but I'm too lazy).

 

[redgaz26]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Let you know in roughly 8 hours!!

 

[Pushkar]

I've had it for about 2 hours, and I must say everyone I have showed it too has been amazed by it, it's such a brilliant device which just grows on you.

 

[mattyuk]

I love it. Everything and more. I need to sort this mp4 conversion out though. I use magic DVD ripper and the apple tv is ok but not the quality I want, I want it like the DVD haha. Guess I'll have to research it.

 

[PHartnett]

I love it. Everything and more. I need to sort this mp4 conversion out though. I use magic DVD ripper and the apple tv is ok but not the quality I want, I want it like the DVD haha. Guess I'll have to research it.

I'm doing the same thing! I've got some HD videos I want in 720p but having trouble, got two of them to work so far, using handbreak, no idea how!

 

[gazwas]

When mine arrived this morning and I opened it up I was a little surprised by the size. I imagined it would be bigger and began to wonder why I've just spent £700 on this big iPod Touch.

However, after I set it up and started using it all I can say is this thing is amazing! £700 is nothing when you experience the iPad in action.

I know they are popular now but as soon as stocks are more widespread and a more diverse range of stores are displaying them it will go crazy. Everyone will want one after playing with it for five mins. The top of most peoples Christmas list this year is a given.

 

[doobry]

When mine arrived this morning and I opened it up I was a little surprised by the size. I imagined it would be bigger and began to wonder why I've just spent £700 on this big iPod Touch.

However, after I set it up and started using it all I can say is this thing is amazing! £700 is nothing when you experience the iPad in action.

I know they are popular now but as soon as stocks are more widespread and a more diverse range of stores are displaying them it will go crazy. Everyone will want one after playing with it for five mins. The top of most peoples Christmas list this year is a given.

Massively disappointed... With my iphone after only an hour of using the iPad. Feels small, dull and slow in comparison!

Really like it. Some great apps, a little heavy after a while but if you can have it on your lap, typing is almost as quick as on the MBP and as a pretty fast touch typist I'm pretty happy with that..

 

[mattyuk]

I'm doing the same thing! I've got some HD videos I want in 720p but having trouble, got two of them to work so far, using handbreak, no idea how!

Yeah I think I have figured it out finally. I was using the 1280x720 which is apparently too big for the iPad.

 

[suksmo]

Yeah I think I have figured it out finally. I was using the 1280x720 which is apparently too big for the iPad.

I'm really, really impressed - more so than what I thought I would be. I don't really have any issues with it. Browsing is not just surfing any more it's surfing riding the crest of a wave. I'd say it's marginally slower at surfing than my MacBook but the overall experience is faster. You can see so much more on the portrait view of a webpage on an iPad.

There's nothing wrong with the keyboard. I'm about as fast typing on my iPad as anything else.

I even like the maligned apple case. It does the job nicely.

Oh and if you are thinking of cutting down a sim do. It's fairly easy and works a charm.

I think that covers everything - so far great great buy.

 

[LaNex]

First impressions ? It's even better than I imagined. My only tiny niggle was no way to enlarge fonts in Safari other than to tap to zoom in, which didn't suit me in every circumstance. But I installed Atomic Browser and the problem went away.
I took the iPad to a rehearsal (I'm a singer) about two hours after I got it and used it to display scores and lyrics with Good Reader instead of taking my huge untidy A4 folder of large print lyrics. I balanced it in one hand on my forearm but it is a touch heavy for me like that, so I'll be getting a stand to bolt onto the mic stand for it.
So far the only thing i have done on my macbook since having the iPad is Farmville (and even then I was too busy playing with the iPad that all my crops had withered. I usually never let that happen.)

Many of the apps i used on my iPhone have fallen by the wayside because they emulated web content - and the iPad is a much better web experience with its larger screen so no specialist apps are needed. Just use the same website as you would on your laptop or desktop. Perhaps the fact that I don't go in for complicated websites anyway is relevant here.

I do however find myself having to prrof read stuff more than i would usually because the iPad dictionary has some odd interpretations of some of my typos sometimes. But whether that will improve as my keyboard use improves or not i don't know. It did automatically capitalize "I" all the time when i first started using it, but now it doesn't. Odd !

Overall it has been worth the wait, definately.

 

[Elise]

I absolutely love it, no complaints at all.

 

[JulianL]

You lucky people. Mine arrived on Thursday so I've had two evenings playing with it, essentially 2 sessions of taking the battery from 100% charge down to about 30% charge. That's one good thing I'll say about it, the battery life doesn't disappoint.

My issue with it, that masks all the good stuff, is that I'm one of what I think Apple calls the "very small number of people" (I'm not sure I believe that spin) experiencing WiFi issues and they're severe. My problem isn't poor signal strength, I get the full 3 bars from my home router, it's that my iPad drops the connection on average every 5 minutes when it just stalls in the middle of whatever it was doing if it involved the network (downloading an app or ibook or loading a web page).

I've found that the quickest way to get it back is to go to the WiFi settings and hit "Renew Lease" (and yes, I have tried setting a static IP address - it still kept dropping the connection so I've gone back to DHCP so that at least I have the "renew lease" button to hit to recover the connection). I've tried all the fixes, including changing channels on my router and even playing with the brightness on the iPad, but it still keeps dropping the connection. It's especially annoying when it does it a couple of times in a row, within a minute of each other; that's the point when I start to think "this thing is going back to Apple as not fit for purpose".

I suspect I'll be quite impressed if and when Apple ever get this sorted out but right now this WiFi issue is putting a serious downer on my iPad ownership experience and I found myself going back to my laptop by the end of yesterday.

- Julian

 

[smiddlehurst]

I only got mine this morning as a birthday present from my wonderful wife so still very early days but I'm blown away at the moment. Beautifully well made, lovely to use and the apps are superb.

One thing I stumbled upon was IM+ which not only let's me do the im thing but delivers push notifications of new messages and emails when I'm not in the app. Basically multitasking for the one thing I really wanted but that wasn't confirmed for os4, lovely.

Honestly I haven't come across anything to nitpick really. iBook prices are too high but that'll sort itself over time and ain't apple's fault. Other than that I'm loving it so far. Oh, and I'm trying to get used to typing on the bigger keyboard with more than one finger and it's bloody quick when you just trust yourself and go for it, even one handed,

 

[LaNex]

(snip wifi problems)

I suspect I'll be quite impressed if and when Apple ever get this sorted out but right now this WiFi issue is putting a serious downer on my iPad ownership experience and I found myself going back to my laptop by the end of yesterday.

- Julian

That's a real downer. What sort of router have you got ? Or does it do it on all routers no matter what make or model ?

I got the very same issues with my macbook pro when I got it (2006, it was well documented as I recall) - it was so frustrating, I just wanted to chuck it out of the window. That all stopped when I got myself an Airport Extreme base station (which I hung out for for about three years ! I was determined Apple should fix it but they didn't). I use my ISP provided adsl router to connect to the socket, turn the wifi off on it, connect it to the AE via ethernet and use the AE in bridge mode to pass through DHCP from the ISP's router. I have found better upnp and port forwarding performance like that.

It is annoying to have to lay out for extra hardware just to solve a problem that isn't your fault in the first place, but it was worth it to me.

I have heard people say that the iPad wifi issues don't occur with Apple routers. But then again, that isn't to say that they don't. As I don't have any problems I haven't delved in too deeply to find out one way or the other.

 

[alecgold]

Julian; It's not funny that you have to Spend a lotmof money, but IMHO the routers/ap's from Internet providers aren't very good. Mine got hot and smelling bad when I used it heavily. So I bought an extreme and never looked back. Then came the time capsule and I upgraded to that, also because my parents where experiencing the same 5min drop out problems you have. And after they had my old extreme they never had a problem any more.

On topic, my experience with the iPad has been great I use it daily and a lot. I need parallels and so I've been using my mbp daily, but every evening I've been reading and surfing with it. So far it has been worth it's money!