Hi guys,
I am working on an article, and am interested in your input.
For those of you who already own the iPad: what does it do better than other devices?

To inspire you, i put the list of things that it does better for me:

1/ meetings & brainstorming - ideal for meetings with a few people sitting around a table - to take notes, browse web or documents - iPad is easy to pass around, easier to carry with you and more engaging to interact with than a laptop

2/ Board games and games for 2 players on one iPad - stuff like Scrabble, Words with friends, Checkers, Air hockey and similar - it's almost just like the real thing, but you got all those games on one device

3/ Sofa web surfing - coming home from work I am often lazy even to turn on computer or laptop, but not the iPad

4/ Viewing and showing photos

5/ Watching films at home using AirVideo - having all the films available just a touch away anywhere around the house (kitchen, bathroom )

6/ ??


Thanks!

What it does better is providing a great user experience. I can read books, watch movies, surf the web, do email, play games, write a beat.... all on my netbook or my desktop..... but I don't, because the iPad is just better. It really does nothing unique except be easy to use, and enjoyable to use. And that, at least for me, is the most important.

It just works. I can do everything the iPad does on my laptop, but I have to mess with driver versions, incompatibilities, file format hell.

If I want to do something my iPad doesn't already do, there's probably an app for that...

And installing a new app doesn't destabilize anything I already have.

I pick it up, turn it on, and it works.

The key selling points for me were its small size, light weight, long battery life and cheap data plan. The cheaper plan alone means the iPad will pay for itself within a couple of years.

Likewise, the battery life and cheap data plan sold me, also. My Sony Vaio netbook is pretty sweet with a much better resolution and Windows 7 (considerably lighter, too...the iPad is a brick!) but even with the big battery I bought it goes 4 hours, tops. Also, the Verizon card works well in places AT&T will never, ever work but Verizon's data plan for it was $60 a month. I suppose it really boils down to what I'm doing. If I'm going out of town for a few days, I take the netbook. If I'm going to the local stadium and want to do email, browsing and watch an MLB game, I take the iPad.

It travels a helluva lot better than my iMac or PBP.

It does most things I do with a smartphone better because it has a larger screen. Email, Web, Social Networking.

It does many of the things I would do with a laptop equally as well, but its more portable. Remote desktop to my work computer, email, etc

I had my iPad delivered on Thursday last week. The following day (less than 24hrs later) amongst other things, I checked an address and confirmed the directions and parking restrictions nearby (Maps), visited a potential customer and gathered the data for a ~ £2k quote (Numbers), read a book (Kindle App - picked up reading where I left off on my iPhone) and bought another (Kindle store, delivered directly to my iPad), watched some telly (TVCatchup) and a few snippets of some movies (killing time - and because I could), listened to some music, answered a few emails, contributed to a forum or two whilst watching telly at home, read some blogs, sorted through some photos and emailed a couple to my sister, played a game or two of air hockey (Touch Hockey) with my teenage son. All of this done in situations I would never have had a laptop with me, and where my iPhone would have been too small to be comfortable.

Is the iPad perfect? Of course not; emailing documents to yourself is an insane way of doing things in the 21st century (now mostly sorted with DropBox btw) and if the on-screen keyboard had cursor keys it would make life a lot easier for me. I haven't tried out Pages yet, but Numbers mangles some of the formatting on the simplest of documents - but it all works, and as imperfect as it is it's streets ahead of what I was using before e.g. it's searchable, and I can now do backups.

And of course, if you just want to play with it, it's a perfectly servicable toy.

HTH, Pete.

Originally Posted by Bremen

What it does better is providing a great user experience. I can read books, watch movies, surf the web, do email, play games, write a beat.... all on my netbook or my desktop..... but I don't, because the iPad is just better. It really does nothing unique except be easy to use, and enjoyable to use. And that, at least for me, is the most important.

Yeah I agree with this, it does not do a great deal better but it's just a charm and pleasure to use .

Key reasons for me:

- Instant on: Just so nice to be a few seconds away from the web
- Convenience (form factor): Perfect size for carrying around while still being large enough to seriously work on
- Interface: I don't know of anything worse than trying to navigate on a netbook's trackpad while holding the netbook in the other hand. Just pointing and swiping is very elegant
- Battery life: I've used it all day and never gotten below 40% battery
- Utility: I write. I am now exclusively writing on the Pad. Love it.