[speedlever]

The Walled Garden is why I never bought into the Apple philosophy. Or products. Or iTunes.

I received an iPad as a gift. I enjoy it. But it is a near computer and is crippled by lack of flash, USB, and being tied to iTunes for updates, etc. Yes, it is a cool PED.

I find using the iPad to be slower to read and reply to forum traffic than using my laptop (XP) or desktop (Win7) computers. When writing a reply to a post, auto-correction (can I turn it off?) continually makes choices that I don't want. And it appears to me that pages load slower than my ancient laptop and almost as ancient 4 year old desktop.

From mail I can touch the hotlink to go to a forum post to read it.. but the iPad has to load Safari (the unchangeable default browser unless you JB the iPad)... Safari loads pretty quickly on an SSD... but when I'm done with that msg, I have to click the home button to get out of Safari and click mail to get back to that app and repeat the process to read and reply. I just find it cumbersome. (I'm used to tabbed browsing on FireFox and Chrome). Yes, I have iCab as an alternative browser, but I can't make it the default without JB'ing the iPad. I don't know of an untethered Windows JB for 4.2.1 yet.

Ok, I'm still pretty new to the iPad so there are likely a bunch of tips and tricks I haven't learned yet that can make the process more fluid. Anyone have any tips to share?

Coming up, it sounds like the Motorola Xoom may hold a lot of promise as an actual computer in tablet form.

Or maybe my years of PC experience totally overshadow and blind me to the Apple way. I dunno.

The iPad can't be beat for playing Angry Birds and such! It easily has the best touchscreen of any device I've ever owned. But that can be a negative if I accidentally touch the screen with another part of my hand.

Bottom line... I like it and enjoy using it... but it won't replace my laptop or desktop... not in it's present form.