When I first heard about the iPad I thought "hmm over sized iPod touch I should probably want that." I was a little skeptical about the price. I owned my touch since the release of the first iPod touch release. I was pretty instantly hooked on that so I couldn't imagine what the iPad was going to do to me. I have been eye balling the iPad for a while and had mentioned it's release about a dozen times since my birthday is right around the corner. When I caught wind I was getting an iPad I instantly jumped up and said, "WAHOO EARLY BIRTHDAY PRESENT LET'S GO!" Thank's Andrea for this wonderful time sucking device you have given me for my birthday :).

When I first opened my iPad I was a little surprised with the weight of it. I expected it to be heavier than what it was. I first went to Safari to check out the keyboard and to surf the net. I strained a little working with my iPod Touch keyboard since everything was so tiny on it. I found the iPad keyboard to be much easier allowing larger buttons and more room for your fingers to hit the correct key. I plan to use my iPad mostly for organizational purposes, Photography, and surfing the net without a big bulky laptop. Being a designer I have a rather large laptop that can sometimes be annoying when I just want to look something up and the iPad is my quick grab and lookup.

App's
I began loading app's that I would need for my iPad. I was surprised to see how many app's have already been developed for the iPad and there are more being added daily. I had worried that my app's from my iPod Touch would appear stretched on the iPad. The iPad has a scaling tool where you can zoom from 2x (the size of the iPod Touch and iPhone screen) to 1x (the size of the iPad screen). I really like this feature and don't find the app's becoming to pixilated.

There is one app that really sticks out for me and that is e-task. It allows me to track leads, manage your clients, plan projects, and much more. This is a great free app that I plan to use to keep track of Photography clients and appointments. I also really enjoy the PrinterShare app that allows me to print off of my iPad to a printer at home or work. That includes photos, contacts, web pages, and even paste to print. This is a very handy tool for me.

My daughter who is 3 was ready to start playing. I was a little timid to let her touch my brand new iPad so I had her sit on the floor and she began playing the the games I had loaded for her. I got both of my parents iPhones and Addison knows Grandma and Grandpa have games on their iPhones. She is a wiz at the iPad zooming through it like she is an Apple pro playing games like PaperFootball and Paper toss. For a 3 year old I must admit she is pretty technically sound it must run in the family ;).

The Display
The Screen quality on the iPad is amazing! The high-resolution, 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS display on iPad is amazing. I have no complaints at all on the display. I can hold my iPad at pretty much any angle and still be able to see the screen just fine.

Battery life
Battery life has yet to be a problem for me. The iPad has up to 10 hours of battery life. I have yet to test this to the fullest but I think that's great. Something's I have noticed that help save on your battery life is your screen brightness. I have adjusted mine so I can extend the battery life a little more.

Safari
Safari is very easy to use on the iPad. You no longer have to fight with the small screen of the iPod Touch and the iPhone. The iPad uses a 9.7-inch high-resolution screen that makes web surfing easy. I love that I can sit back and relax with my iPad on my lap and surf the net. No longer do I worry about a bulky laptop to look up things on the internet.

Mail
I found the mail very easy to setup and very easy to navigate my way through emails. I primarily use it for my personal email address but I also set up a pop account that is a few more steps to set up, but still very easy to setup and understand.

Photos
I really like the photo feature on the ipad. Photos are very easy to view flipping through them one by one or even setting up a slide show. I think the slide show is a great feature because you can use your iPad as a photo frame as well

Videos
The video's on the iPad appear extremely clear and provide good sound using the internal sound on the iPad. I am actually very impressed with the sound on the iPad.


iPod
The iPod on the iPad is very well organized. I like the left menu that has been added to the iPad where I can easily view my playlists without skipping through several different screens. This makes the iPad very easy to navigate when you are using the iPod. Again the sound is great! I had some doubts as to how the iPad would actually sound but I am very happy with the quality of sound that it has.

iTunes & App Store
iTunes is a sinch to use on the iPad. Finding songs and searching through them on the iPod Touch could sometimes be very time consuming. Not with the iPad! The iPad version of iTunes is more like the desktop version of iTunes allowing easier navigation of songs, movies, app's etc...I find it much much easier and a good improvement compared to the iTunes on the iPod Touch.

Maps, Notes, Calendar, and Contacts
Of course the iPad includes Maps, Notes, Calendar, and Contacts. The maps are much easier to view on the iPad's 9.7-inch high-resolution screen. The notes are always handy. I typically use the Notes to keep track of my daily to do list. The ipad Calendar is a great way to keep track of your schedule. Viewing daily, weekly and monthly calendars is a sinch. I especially like how easy it is to add event's and set up alert's for your event's. I am terrible about remembering appointments so my iPad keeps me in line with all my scheduled events. The Contacts are also very easy to add. I like that you can add a Photo of your contact as long as it is being stored on your iPad. I also like that if you click on the email address of your contact that it takes you right to a blank email to send off to them. All great features!

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Overall I really like my new iPad. There is one down fall that I really wish Apple would have added and that's the flash plug in. That is really my biggest complaint so far with my iPad. I do recommend purchasing a cover for your iPad to protect it. I have the Apple iPad Case on order right now since my local Apple store was out of stock. I am sure I have much more to find on my iPad and am so far enjoying it

When apple announced that they had released the new iPod Touch second generation I had to see what all the fuse was about. I love my iPod Touch I don't go anywhere with out it ;). I decided to head out to the apple store yesterday not expecting to actually find one in stock. I was amazed to find out that they sill had a few 16GB still in stock. I had the 8GB on my first generation but at this point figured I would be ready for the 16GB with my regular downloading I do from iTunes ha! I had a really nice sales guy at the Apple store who was really talking it up so when I pulled out my first generation iPod he said it would knock it out of the water. I at first was skeptical and wondered if it would be worth it. The new iPod Touch is priced great. The 8GB is now 229.00 the 16GB is 299.00 and the new 32GB is 399.00. I figured why not so I purchased it. I gave it a pretty good test run that evening and let me just say the sales guy was right!

Built-in speaker.

I absolutely love the built in speaker on the new iPod Touch second generation! There were so many times when I would want my husband to listen to a song and I either had to hand him over the head phones (I am possessive of my iPod ha) or play it through iTunes. Now I can just play the song its great! When I first heard the new Touch had a built in speaker I didn't think the sound quality would be very good. Let me just say for not having any holes for the actual speaker it sounds great! This is by far my favorite new features.

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I have had several people ask me how to add their own album covers to iTunes well here you go! The first thing I usually do is find the artist in iTunes to get the correct albumn cover shhh ;) or you can create your own. I then print screen the image and crop it down in photoShop...You could do this in any Photo editing software though. You must then save your image as a .jpg.

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