IPad disappointment

[graywolf]

I agree with the OP. I think the iPad does a pretty good job for a portable device, but compared to my desktop PC I would guess it is at best 50% as fast at rendering web pages. That being said, comparing the iPad hardware to my PC I think that is pretty good. I think the real bottle neck with the iPad is the extremely small amount of system RAM. I am betting the next generation will address that issue.

According to CPU teardowns, the iPad has 2 gb of ram. But 3/4 of it is usually taken up by springboard and if you don't clear out your multitasking bar it has significantly less. So yes, the iPad 2 needs more ram

The iPad does not have anywhere near 2GB of RAM. It might have a 2GB ROM for the operating system (not sure about that just guessing) but it has 256MB of RAM, just like the iPod Touch. The iPhone 4 by comparison has 512MB of RAM. I am betting that the next generation iPad will have at least 512MB and more likely 1GB of RAM to work with which will help with web browsing because entire pages can be loaded into memory instead of half pages like you get with intense sites right now.

I think the iPad actually does a pretty good job at web browsing considering the fact that it is basically cell phone hardware with a big screen on it. It doesn't render pages anywhere near what my PC does, but then again I can't put my PC on my lap without some serious discomfort.

Like I said, 3/4 of it is usually taken up by springboard. My source:

Apple A4 Teardown - iFixit

Scroll down to step 19.

 

[DaveSt]

Like I said, 3/4 of it is usually taken up by springboard. My source:

Apple A4 Teardown - iFixit

Scroll down to step 19.

Yes, I have seen that tear down before (those guys are nuts). Step 19 shows that the processor is equipped with 2Gb (that is giga-BITS, not giga-BYTES) of memory. Take 2,048,000,000 / 8 and you get 256,000,000 bytes, or 256MB.

 

[y2kgtp]

Like I said, 3/4 of it is usually taken up by springboard. My source:

Apple A4 Teardown - iFixit

Scroll down to step 19.

Yes, I have seen that tear down before (those guys are nuts). Step 19 shows that the processor is equipped with 2Gb (that is giga-BITS, not giga-BYTES) of memory. Take 2,048,000,000 / 8 and you get 256,000,000 bytes, or 256MB.

Says right on step 19. 2GB would be nice tho....

Decoding this part number shows there is 2Gb of memory inside. This translates into ~128MB of memory per die, for 256 MB total.

 

[Thphilli]

LMAO. The two resident Android trolls, Superbike and Thphilli, back at it.

I'm sorry for stating absolute facts that you don't like.

 

[David79]

took me about 6 secs also to load and right now I am not even using router I am tethered on iphone running at only 49KBs and it loads just fine.

 

[geep]

So what's the matter?

I went to link from forum and it took about 5 secs and I use a router with my Alltel data USB. We don't even have 3g yet here. AT&T will be here in a few weeks.

So if my MacBook can load at less than 5 seconds and YOUR iPad can load at 5 seconds, why does my ipad take 19 seconds to load the same page?
I set up a help call with apple and they never phoned.....fail!

Since i use this iPad mostly for couch surfing, this wireless speed is a big issue for me

 

[David79]

have you tried resetting network settings? restarting ipad? turning off wifi then back on?

 

[DaveSt]

I went to link from forum and it took about 5 secs and I use a router with my Alltel data USB. We don't even have 3g yet here. AT&T will be here in a few weeks.

So if my MacBook can load at less than 5 seconds and YOUR iPad can load at 5 seconds, why does my ipad take 19 seconds to load the same page?
I set up a help call with apple and they never phoned.....fail!

Since i use this iPad mostly for couch surfing, this wireless speed is a big issue for me

It takes mine about that long to load the page as well. The page comes up before that, but it takes about 20 seconds to completely finish loading if looking at the progress bar. My desktop loads the page in a couple of seconds. Believe it or not, my iPod Touch 2G loads the page in less than 10 seconds. The only thing I can say is that it seems like the iPad is very picky about which routers it works well with. I have a new router on the way next week so it will be interesting to see if that changes the performance at all.

 

[geep]

have you tried resetting network settings? restarting ipad? turning off wifi then back on?

Yep

 

[David79]

Thats a lil weird then, not sure.

 

[Thphilli]

OK, going to do a pretty comprehensive test using my desktop, iPad and Android phone using this link:

CBC Saskatchewan - News, Weather, Radio, TV

Speed test for iPad on wifi:

Speed test for Epic4g on wifi:

Speed test for Desktop hardwired:

Load times for www.cbc.ca/sask/ in seconds.

Not finished loading until all elements appear on the page. Progress bar means nothing unless all elements are loaded.

iPad (Safari):
8.873, 8.862, 9.49

iPad (iCab adblock):
11.237, 10.313, 13.902

iPad (iCab no addblock):
14.513, 9.41, 9.646

Desktop (Chrome w/adblock):
2.3, 1.8, 2.1

Epic4g (Browser w/adblock):
6.53, 5.766, 6.387


The iPad should be faster than my phone, but for some reason its not. It has a much better wireless card as evidenced by the wifi speeds. I dont know what is going on with the iPad using the iCab browser, as somehow blocking ads slows down the browser?? Very confusing. Safari is the fastest browser on the iPad as usual. The ping for the iPad is consistently slower than the Epic4g, but its still a very good ping. I have no way to disable adblock on the Epic4g, or else I would do that to test. Its cooked into the rom to block all ads throughout all apps.

Overall, it doesn't look like the iPad is as optimized as it could be for web browsing. It could be a function of having only 256MB of memory, or it could be some deeper optimization that has yet to be done.

 

[pricej636]

I went to link from forum and it took about 5 secs and I use a router with my Alltel data USB. We don't even have 3g yet here. AT&T will be here in a few weeks.

So if my MacBook can load at less than 5 seconds and YOUR iPad can load at 5 seconds, why does my ipad take 19 seconds to load the same page?
I set up a help call with apple and they never phoned.....fail!

Since i use this iPad mostly for couch surfing, this wireless speed is a big issue for me

My first 16GB wifi iPad had horrible internet speeds, very slow app downloading while my MBP, my iPhone 4, etc all had great speeds. Upon running some speed tests I noticed my ping times on the iPad were terrible, approx. 150-400ms compared to approx. 40ms on my other devices. I saw similar results on my home Airport Extreme as well as my Cisco router at work. Exchanged the iPad for another one (16GB 3G/wifi) and didnt have that problem. So I dont know if it was that one particular iPad or the wifi version in general. I saw conflicting reports all over the internet on whether the 3G version was seeing stronger wifi signals than the wifi iPad.

 

[David79]

my ping on my iphone 3gs is never under 500ms lol

 

[tnbug]

It's possible it was the device itself.
A friend has the 16GB wifi only and his is as fast as my notebook
i was surprised how fast it was.
If i ever get one mine will probably be the slowest one built.

 

[graywolf]

My iPad is faster then my brother's MacBook pro he got at Christmas. Ouch.

iPad 16gb Wi-Fi 4.2.1 jailbroken untethered