If you had to buy your iPad over again....

[nightfly13]

Silly hypothetical scenario that might help the undecided:

So say Steve Jobs shows up at your house, hands you a check for your money back and confiscates your iPad. His reality distortion field negates your ability to defend yourself, so you thank him, shake his hand, and try to remember where you little-used laptop is so you can order another iPad.

Which one do you buy, this time around?

 

[One Love 1867]

Excellent thread.

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to answer as I don't have an iPad yet, but with pre-orders starting tomorrow in the UK I'm looking for as much current-owner feedback as possible regarding model satisfaction etc!

Get your answers in folks and help out the UK undecided!

 

[edlex]

You forgot one option. Buying the exact same one. Which I would.

 

[lukefinch]

One Love 1867, are you getting yours from meadowhall?

I'm sure of what im getting though and i'm pre ordering mine tomorrow. 16GB because thats all i need. Just wifi because i have no need for 3G.

 

[random person]

I bought my 64gig wifi within five minutes of it's introduction. I knew I wanted 3G but simply could not/would not wait for it.

Now I have to say that wifi only has not been an issue for me as wifi seems to be just about everywhere I go. That said, I pine for a 3G and wish in a way that I had held out for the 3G launch!

For those of you buying now I'd say without hesitation go for the 3G. Small price to pay for insurance of access.

Still trying to figure out why apple staged the introduction of the two. For sure I would have bought the 64g 3G the first day if it had been available.

But, would I have been happier waiting? Hell no! And I love my iPad just the same!

Oh and the more disk space the better, I say!.

 

[One Love 1867]

One Love 1867, are you getting yours from meadowhall?

I'm sure of what im getting though and i'm pre ordering mine tomorrow. 16GB because thats all i need. Just wifi because i have no need for 3G.

More than likely, yeah. Depending on the ease of ordering for an in-store pickup.

I'll also be buying a 16GB WiFi unit. I have an iPod to accommodate for my music (and even the 64GB iPad won't hold all of my music library, anyway) and have absolutely no intention of watching movies on anything smaller than my 42" HDTV at home. As an e-reader, web browser, magazine reader, the occasional game player etc, 16GB should be enough.

I also can't see it leaving the house all that often. When it does, there are methods to access the net that don't include an initial £100 premium on the device itself or restrictive/expensive data plan charges..

 

[Lumpydog]

Still trying to figure out why apple staged the introduction of the two.

FCC approval of the 3G

 

[lukefinch]

More than likely, yeah. Depending on the ease of ordering for an in-store pickup.

I'll also be buying a 16GB WiFi unit. I have an iPod to accommodate for my music (and even the 64GB iPad won't hold all of my music library, anyway) and have absolutely no intention of watching movies on anything smaller than my 42" HDTV at home. As an e-reader, web browser, magazine reader, the occasional game player etc, 16GB should be enough.

I also can't see it leaving the house all that often. When it does, there are methods to access the net that don't include an initial £100 premium on the device itself or restrictive/expensive data plan charges..

Well everywhere i go does have free wifi anyway such as Meadowhall, Ice Sheffield, Virtual Ice, School and McDonalds so i really have no need for 3G whatsoever and if i need to use it that badly, i can just use my iPhone.

Definatley not worth the extra £100+monthly fee's in my opinion.

 

[TraceyS/FL]

I'd buy what we have again.

For my 14yo, the 32gb wifi. She is oddly using it as her music player, and has our entire music library on there, whish is like 13gb. Then she fills any space left with movies. She could, like any teen probably, fill a 64 in a flash. But the 32 gives her "play space" and "school space". It was a good choice. (she has an 8gb nano, the 3rd gen one, which is where I expected her music to live... She uses the iPad the most now though)

For me, I'd buy the 32gb 3G again. Gives me flex room to load it up with school stuff for the younger kids, and have own stuff. Sure I would have bought the 64 if money hadn't been a concern.

I have a 32gb touch and it has worked out better than I thought. I knew I'd still be using it for music (which has my library on it), and offloading my mail & PDFs to the iPad, so the 64 between the 2 of them is really about perfect for now and let's me just not have to think about it.

16 for me would just mean more work. I don't want to have to juggle things around that much. The experiment with the 8gb touch showed me that in the 6 months I had it before passing it to a kid when I got enough money at Christmas to upgrade.

As for the 3G, as I have stated before, I'm out of the house at kid things 8 hours at least a week, with an additional 3 hours of travel time. None of those places have wifi. It's a big chunk of time, and this week I actually got a project done while they were at art class. I didn't have to come home and get sidetracked by another project, I worked on what I had with me. It was nice. I should add here, I don't have a phone with data, so this replaces that in my budget.

All in all, I'm beyond pleased and have No buyers remorse for bigger or smaller.

 

[nightfly13]

You forgot one option. Buying the exact same one. Which I would.

Yeah I thought about that, but you can, of course, still vote for the model you had last time. I thought it'd be more helpful for the community to know which you chose, and not just that you feel you chose well the first time.

Maybe I can make it multiple choice and add in 'I'd upgrade to 3G' option.

Oh and UK/International users, I had you in mind when I started this thread. I suspect the 3G will be a run-away hit, but we'll get more votes in before start drawing conclusions. I think the FCC delay will work in Apple's favor, as I can foresee many wives getting hand-me-down WiFi models while their geek husbands upgrade to 3G units. Crazy thing is, I think in many of those situations, both will get a lot of use. All indications suggest that people LOVE their iPads and use their prior computers as little as possible.

My folks asked me 'what are you going to do when the next model is better and has a camera or whatever' and I just shrugged and said 'I'll buy that too, I think my family can easily make use of 2 iPads, let's see.'

 

[antiprotest]

Buy the 64GB 3G.

 

[boltjames]

As the owner of a 3G/64GB/$829 and a board member of the iPad 3G Elitist Club®, I can tell you that we have no regrets; just pity for the rest of you.

BJ

 

[Mr. Biggles]

You forgot one option. Buying the exact same one. Which I would.

Bingo!

 

[nightfly13]

My rationale for 16GB

Just to help the undecided, I'll explain why I feel 16GB is plenty for me. This is not a criticism of those who've chosen larger models, but for me, with my arsenal of iP* devices and lifestyle, 16GB is more than enough.

I won't use it for music. At home I have AirTunes connected in 3 rooms, controlled by my iPhone, so that's great. When I travel (which is split equally solo/with my young family of 5) I basically use one of our two iPod Nanos for music. They go forever and are easy to stow. If I do want an audio book or something handy with me in every day life, I have a 32GB iPhone that's only 60% full. I'll probably put 1GB of 'background music' for reading (Beethoven String Quartets) like I did on my Kindle. If I had a long commute, things might be different, although I'd probably still employ the Nano for that...or my iPhone.

eBooks are small! Even fancy, interactive kids books aren't very big. Cat in the Hat was 13mb, and pure text books are tiny! The English Standard Bible is 1.2MB (on Kindle), and everything else smaller.

I do think my kids/wife will watch videos on the iPad. They'll do so with 'live conversion' and Air Video. Totally worth $3 to stream any file format video across my WiFi network. When we do our annual trip across the world (I live 12.5 time zones from my native 'home') I'll have 4-5GB of kids movies/episodes loaded for the occasion, I figure that's roughly equivalent to the battery life. My kids don't mind watching the same cartoons over and over.

Photos are a bit of an unknown. I normally have the 'last 2 months' smart photo album sync'd to my iPhone from iPhoto. Right now, converted down to iPhone size, that's under 100mb. I think I'll probably spend some time making a few photo albums that I'm likely to show people more often (last family vacation to Taj Mahal for example) plus the photos will be bigger for the iPad, so I'm thinking 1-2GB might go to Photos.

The rest of the space will be Apps, and generally they're small. I have 1.12GB apps on my iPhone presently and I should probably delete 30% of them. The all-in-1 game box is 200mb of that and everything else is smaller, as far as I can tell.

Hope that's of help to some of you. If I had a long commute, I'd probably go to a larger size.

 

[nightfly13]

As the owner of a 3G/64GB/$829 and a board member of the iPad 3G Elitist Club®, I can tell you that we have no regrets; just pity for the rest of you.

BJ

LOL does your wife know she's down the list on your sig?

 

[ZBoater]

As the owner of a 3G/64GB/$829 and a board member of the iPad 3G Elitist Club®, I can tell you that we have no regrets; just pity for the rest of you.

BJ

LOL! +1.

 

[Hammie]

I would buy the same exact version as I did -- the 3G 64GB version.

 

[richpjr]

I would buy the same exact version as I did -- the 3G 64GB version.

This.

 

[gillybean]

I would buy the same exact version as I did -- the 3G 64GB version.

^

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I originally bought a 16GB WiFi. It was fine, storage wise, but decided I wanted the 3G at the last minute...literally like 4:30pm on launch day. I got to the Apple Store at 5:20 and the 16GBs were sold out so I "bit the bullet" and bought the 32GB. I'll never get any use out of all the extra space and wish I could have bought a 16GB, but that's how it goes. I think 16GB is the sweet spot. Sure, there are plenty of ways to waste space w/ the larger models, but it's just that...waste. No practical use at all unless you are going on a two month cruise to the center of nowhere.

 

[LordOBoogie]

You forgot one option. Buying the exact same one. Which I would.

Same here.

 

[VladM]

I'd buy the 3G version - I actually knew it would be a much better fit for me, but I had an opportunity to get one from the US before the 3G came out, and couldn't wait for the 3G to be released.

I will get the 3G first chance I get, and either give this one to my wife, or sell it.

 

[Ottonaldo]

I originally bought a 16GB WiFi. It was fine, storage wise, but decided I wanted the 3G at the last minute...literally like 4:30pm on launch day. I got to the Apple Store at 5:20 and the 16GBs were sold out so I "bit the bullet" and bought the 32GB. I'll never get any use out of all the extra space and wish I could have bought a 16GB, but that's how it goes. I think 16GB is the sweet spot. Sure, there are plenty of ways to waste space w/ the larger models, but it's just that...waste. No practical use at all unless you are going on a two month cruise to the center of nowhere.

Totally agree ...

 

[ZBoater]

I don't think it's wasted space. It depends on your usage patterns. One of the things i hate the most after a root canal and doing my taxes is syncing with iTunes. I find it slow and inconvenient. So I'd rather put as much stuff as I can. I have tv shows, movies, all my pictures, all my music, all at my fingertips without having to sync. That was worth the price difference TO ME.

YMMV

 

[jimboutilier]

If I lived outside the US I'd likely get the 64gb 3G model but not really interested in AT&T service so use my wifi ipad with a verizon mifi.

Given I have several devices I want to use a 3G connection on the mifi is likely a better solution for me anyway but I would love to have unlimited verizon 3G built in.

Sigh. Maybe next years iPad.