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Comment by watmough | Hacker News Reader

Yes, love the thing. Great for web surfing, surprisingly great for running iPhone apps (but BIGGER, great for older folks), fantastic for watching videos, mail is great.

Not so good for running IM type apps where you want them to background. Not so great for a lot of typing, since the keyboard is a step back from the iPhone, with keys moving around inconsistently, and various weird foibles (shift key coloring? WTH?).

The iPad was rushed out with 3.2 as a stopgap, and it shows. It's a great device, but it needs iOS 4 and a camera badly.

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If you're referring to the blue shift key, it means "caps lock". Tap the shift again to remove caps lock.

Would you buy it again?

I know I would. We (my gf and I) use it for ebooks, browsing, and playing games (Yatzee, Scrabble, etc), amongst other things. The only thing I dislike is the battery life - typical tasks (browsing, ebook reading etc) tend to draw power faster than the charger can fill the battery.

Interesting - so what's with 10 hours usage without charging? Do you find it true statement after weeks of using the device?

It probably works out to that but because of typically sporadic use it adds up. Games (any, not just graphics-intesive ones) seem use battery life faster though. It does have great "stand-by" battery life though.

I use mine every day and it gets the full 10-11 hours most people are getting for non-gaming activities, somewhat less for gaming activities, and charges way faster than I can drain it (though I haven't tried this while gaming I suspect it'll still be true.)

Something is definitely wrong with your iPad, and you should take it into an Apple Store to have it checked out.

I probably charge mine once/week with I'd say moderate use.

"Would you buy it again?"

Yes, absolutely. And I think I'd buy the same model of 16 Gig Wifi/3G that I bought this time. Thus far, with some music and a good selection of HD WWDC 2010 videos, I'm still only at 8 Gigs used.

Watching these videos (I8n, UIScrollViews, CoreText so far) in a comfortable setting whilst feeding the baby have been the killer app so far.

The iPad is not a laptop, it takes up much less space, much easier to handle, doesn't get hot, doesn't have a fan. Though more limited, its relationship to laptops is similar to how much of a jump my 20" iMac was over a regular PC desktop. Less space, less noise, less heat.

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