Extensive use of the iPad 2 (from which I am typing right now) I have discovered that although it might well be one of the best tablets out there the technology is still premature. The keyboard is one of the main things since at first the layout and size seem somehow weird and your fingers no matter how small that is tend to twitch so that you do not hit any other keys and so making many mistakes. Certainly not the most comfortable to type on, and of course you could tell me to use an external keyboard but that is still annoying because it adds a lot of extr a bult to you device and also drains a lot of bsattery because of the bluetooth. Honestly that is not the best travel solutions by no means. However, as I am typing this I am discovering that I am starting to get increases accuracy and speed typing. I still am making a lot of mistakes and my hands and fingers feel weird and are already starting to itch as I am typing this.
Another thing that I am observing about the IPad 2 is that it is not as snappy as it it's advertised to be. In applications such as IMovie, there tends to be an occasional lag which is perfectly understandable since these are pretty stressful processing and it still is pretty admirable that the iPad can do what it does.
Another thing that I might object with is the fact that the sound is pretty bad thought. Since Apple decided to only add one speaker (if you are holding the iPad in portrait) on the right bottom speaker (behind the device).
The sound is very low for things like watching videos on your average video. The fact that you don't even get stereo sound in a device of this size is also pretty much worth of pity. Another bad decision related to the speaker is that it is located behind the device which combined with the already low volume of the device make a very muffled sound. In this case, Apple has again reduce a useful thing for the sake of cosmetics.
The last issue I wanted to talk about today was the low quality of the cameras.
I do well admire the fact that Apple finally decided to add a front and back facing camera to the device but I believe they could have done two more thing to actually add a major improvement throughout this update of the original IPad: they could have added a flash to the back facing camera and they could have also at least add cameras that have the same quality as the IPhone's. This is probably part of the Apple marketing strategy that makes a user have to re-buy a device every year for the sake of a few but critical updates related to hardware and over a more extended period of time software.
One of the last things that I wanted to clarify about this device was that apple said that the new processor, the A5 has double the speed of its predecessor, the A4. That is technically incorrect because both CPU's are clocked at 1 GHz. Th difference is that the A5 has one more processing cores than the A4 so it's a dual core processor. If a device has 2 cores it doesn't mean that the device is two times as fast but rather that you can run more applications at the same time. Also, while in the computer world applications such as games running on a dual core processor usually are able to use more of the CPU than is clocking speed because it can basically divide the task between the 2 cores. However, the IPad can't take advantage of such processing power. It only allows it to run more applications at the same time. So, technically the A5 chip is not 2x faster than the A4 but rather can run a few more apps at the same time.
In conclusion, I believe that the IPad is a very overpriced device for what it can do and a better alternative for the money would be to build yourself a 6 Core DESKTOP Pc or if you are looking for a portable solution a netbook wit higher performance for only $400 or so. I suggest waiting a little more before diving head~first in the world of the tablets since it is still a very premature technology.
