Hello,

I was unfortunate enough to drop my lovely new iPad 3 (purchased in March 2012...so around 7 months old now).
It happened last Wednesday (not this Wednesday just gone by, but the one before) and I was on the bus home.
The bus driver was evidently driving too fast and had to slow down, rapidly, in order to stop at the traffic lights.
The iPad, which I was using to browse the web at the time, flew out of my hands and onto the floor and cracked.
Now the iPad was in it's leather case at the time. But the top (head) of the iPad hit the floor with quite a loud bang.

The screen has lots of cracks over the top of the iPad and over the front camera.
It also has 4-5 larger cracks stretching from the top of the screen to the bottom.
However, the iPad appears to be working perfectly fine. And the screen is also fine.
Apart from the rather annoying cracks which everyone can see (especially myself!!!),
the iPad doesn't seem to have any damage (as yet) to the LCD beneath the screen.

Now, I rang up Apple and explained the situation. They said it would cost me £250 odd for a replacement iPad.
Now I cannot afford this right now. I can't even afford the cost of a new screen, never mind for a repair service.
It looks like I have no choice but to continue using my iPad in its current state. What I'm asking is, can I do this?
Would there be any greater risk of long-term damage to the device or LCD if I continue to use my iPad as normal?
Does anybody else have a cracked screen device that they haven't repaired but still continue to use as normal?
Would they be so kind as to tell me whether or not they had any problems with this? Thank you.

You will have no problems using your iPad as is with the cracks in it. The touch screen that is cracked is separate from the LCD display and so will not effect the display. Once you have the money you could replace the touch screen only yourself. There are numerous write ups to be found that will guide you through the procedure if you Google iPad 3 touch screen replacement.