When iPad was announced, I wasn’t really sure if I needed one. All the time I drag my mac around, so I thought I don’t another device to keep an eye on. But when it was released in the Netherlands, I wanted one. My iPad arrived last week and so far it found its rightful place on my desk. Anyway, here’s what I like and dislike about my iPad.

The Hardware

iPad has gorgeous screen with very nice 1024X768 resolution. The screen looked pretty amazing – considering that all this time I’ve been using the tiny iPhone screen. The detail is amazing and it is super fast. I got so much used to the screen rotation, that now and then I try to hold my iPhone in landscape mode and wait for it to switch.

iPad has only 256MB, which made the calendar and Mail etc. crash occasionally. The logs show that the iPad’s memory is maxed out. The in-built speaker(s) are surprisingly good, and they make the iPad work like my radio during cooking in the kitchen. The microphone audio quality is also very nice. I’ve been using Skype exclusively on iPad, and it worked pretty well.

And the battery life is simply unbelievable. Even with my heavy and continuous usage, the battery didn’t die for almost 2 days.

The Apps

These are the apps I use daily on my iPad

• OmniFocus
• Reeder – RSS Reader
• Twitterrific
• Dropbox
• Mail
• Mobile Safari

After I started using the Reeder, I didn’t even open my usual RSS client on Desktop (NetNewsWire). This is one of the most thoughtfully designed app I’ve ever seen. OmniFocus on iPad fully syncs with my desktop application. It works perfectly as a standalone app too. I love the “Forecast” view on it. And I wish that this feature is also added to the iPhone and Mac versions. Twitterrific also replaced my desktop twitter reading on Itsy. All these apps are great and I didn’t miss my MBP even once.

With Mobile Safari and Mail apps, I survived the whole weekend without even opening the Mac. That’s great. So I’ve moved all the Internet consumption and productivity applications to iPad. Now I don’t need to open them on my Mac at all, less distractions and of course, more memory to sacrifice at the Maven’s altar.

The Games

I’m not much of a Gamer, but I downloaded a couple of games to play on iPad. I love the Angry Birds HD on this gorgeous screen and the free Super 7 HD is also a very beautiful game. All in all iPad is one of best Gaming devices. Its fast and got some pretty decent resolution.

Ebook Reader

I read a lot – but mostly on the Web. I haven’t used a proper eBook reader, so I can’t really compare iPad’s reading experience with them. The iBooks app is pretty good for reading the PDFs I have and mostly I read the books on Safari Library, so it is more or less a browsing experience – which I can say really usable.

The Cons

My three main gripes about are – Typing, Weight and Glossy Screen.

The on-screen keyboard is an okay kind of solution if you just want to send tweets, and write moderately long emails. But typing something like this blog post is a horrible experience. I consistently hit on the ‘n’ or ‘m’ instead of space bar. I also have to keep all my fingers in the air all the time, otherwise. I guess for real typing you need the bluetooth keyboard.

The iPad feels heavy if you continue to hold it in one hand. My hand started to ache to hold it in one hand for too long.

The Glossy screen is very smudge-prone and generally I hate glossy screens, mirroring everything – lights and all. But it was solvable by adding the screen protector which changed the iPad to feel like Matte Screen.

But all in all, the iPad was just the device that I needed to reduce clutter and distraction on my Mac. Now when I’m in front of a Mac, I’m doing the real work, and iPad for communication and consuming the Internet.