No reason to be rude. Thanks for the help everyone.

I'm not being rude. I am simply stating that we answered your question but you said no one answered it.

You want to use the device to stream everything from eBooks (which you can't do to the best of my knowledge), to all music, video, and photos, and leave absolutely nothing on the device nor do you seem interested in buying or downloading any apps from the sound of it...

And if that's the case, then it honestly probably isn't for you. It's not like that's an insult, it's just a fact. Some people can use it, some people just aren't meant to.

I say, give it a try. Even if you use it for a bit, you'll still be able to sell it. I'm a Windows user, but I'm in love with my iPad. It is rarely out of my hands. I too, have a Wii that I rarely ever use, but the iPad is nothing like that. I can't answer your streaming questions, as I've no need for it. But I do know, young or old, everyone who has tried out my iPad, wants one. I use it for everything, my computer sits unused, other than to sync my iPad, or play some Everquest2

Originally Posted by cherhall

I say, give it a try. Even if you use it for a bit, you'll still be able to sell it. I'm a Windows user, but I'm in love with my iPad. It is rarely out of my hands. I too, have a Wii that I rarely ever use, but the iPad is nothing like that. I can't answer your streaming questions, as I've no need for it. But I do know, young or old, everyone who has tried out my iPad, wants one. I use it for everything, my computer sits unused, other than to sync my iPad, or play some Everquest2

Very true!

Originally Posted by holo7

Neither of us use ITunes or have any apple products. We have a small home network of 3 pc's and an Xbox 360 that we use to share pictures, music and stream videos. We're trying to decide if it's worth keeping this device or rather Ebay it and buy a new laptop. I can not seem to find a simple yes or no answer on if the Ipad will be able to stream videos from our home network?

I see there are a few 'apps' that you can purchase that might or might not stream vids, but can the Ipad itself do it without these? I'd rather not go through a load of hassle having to convert mkv, avi, ogg, etc files to whatever the Ipad needs to read and then have to transfer them. It would be a definitive keeper for us if it has the ability to stream like our Xbox 360 does from our network with Pictures, Music and Video.

As GailLA mentioned, Air Video will do this, but the iPad won't do it out of the box on its own. On the other hand, the iPad won't do too much out of the box on its own anyways: it's really a device which is meant to be extended through apps which utilize its hardware.

Another question is how does one transfer files from your home network/pc to the Ipad? I see suggestions of emailing pictures and music, which seems a little crazy for what should be an easy plug in fix? The Apple site shows it comes with a "Dock Connector to USB Cable" - is this not a simple usb transfer cable one could use to transfer files? Can't the Ipad simply connect to our network and open up a folder and copy + paste? We're a little bewildered as PC users to the difficulty we've had in finding out answers to what seem to be easy questions. Then again we're clueless when it comes to Apple products, which is largely the issue .

Again we're not very familiar with Apple products, so please excuse our ignorance. Thank you for any and all help/tips!

You seem to be thinking of the iPad as a Windows netbook, with the idea that you'll just use the iPad to connect to a shared network drive and "copy files". The iPad isn't a netbook or a laptop, though, it's more like a smartphone with much better specs. In particular, the iPad operating system isn't like Windows or Mac OS X in the way it treats files - you don't have a "hard drive" like you're used to, so the idea of just dumping files onto the device is, from the iPad perspective, gibberish. Each app has its own storage space, and each app is responsible for transferring files onto or off-of the device. With the iPad release and the upcoming iOS 4 release, apps are starting to get the ability to move files around between themselves, but this is still fairly new.

More specifically, to answer your question: you transfer files through iTunes (and yes, the dock->usb cable is the cable you use to do this) or some apps can transfer them through WiFi. In general, you'd do better to ask "How can I transfer files to GoodReader?" (GoodReader is a document-viewing app) instead of "How can I transfer files to the iPad?".

I hope that helps. It sounds complicated, but in practice it's very simple; it just requires a mental leap that is hard to get used to when you've been dealing with desktop operating systems exclusively.

Huh. Just realized that this topic was a little older than I thought, but maybe my typing won't go entirely to waste for other Windows users passing through. :-)

You never know what someone will come across via Google, so it was worth the write up.

I dont know

Hi, like the user above i am also interested in finding out whether or not you can map a drive to the ipad. I recently purchased one and would primarly be using it instead of my laptop that i previously used to log in remotely from home after work hours. I work at a car dealership and use a CRM Software system: dealersocket which allows connectivity between remotely accessing my work email and ultimately checking out the inventory listed on my website as well as other sites. I would greatly appreciate any insight on this subject! Thank you in advance!

Access ipad file system from desktop explorer. I noticed that iphone explored was not able to detect the ipad when it is connected. I went to cydia and installed afc2add. Guess what? desktop runnning iphone explorer can see ipads files now.