Ipad as an e-book reader and much more

I've been reading many many books on the ipad in the last couple days. ibooks and Amamzon kindle books are a pleasure to read on the device. As with any backlighted device, there is some eye strain if read a lot or too long, but it is worth it. It is very easy to obtain a book, and use it right away. And it is very easy to navigate within the apple ibook application. Ipad as an ebook reader is simply amazing. I've used three ebook readers and this by far is my favorite.

Lastly, I see where ipads are being implemented in point of sale situations, medical labs and hospitals, and every school kid wants one of course.

In my opinion, this is to the pc what a pc was once to a typewriter (what?).... they'll just improve these devices and competition will make even better ones available, and we'll all end up with new revolutionary "computer" tools in the very near future. Envision this in every car, in every restaurant, in every doctor's office, and what you'll read your morning newspaper on.

Seriously, in my opinion, with newspapers and magazine subscriptions at a historical low... this is the media you'll soon get your daily newspaper on and monthly magazines on, etc! And your tv and movies too! Some are ALREADY available in record time.

This will be pervasive technology. It explodes the new era that already had begun... blended media

Ipad is really nice!

The Apple Ipad was released earlier this month and after testing, it is found to be a very useful, although NOT a pc, tool!

I use it to surf the web, do light documents with Apple's proprietary document kit (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). These documents are compatible with MS Office.

The Ipad is feature rich and fun. It is NOT a pc. In other words, there is no removable media capability, i.e. no thumb drive port, no zip disk, no cd/dvd drive, and no "real" hard drive (it uses flash drive).

If you have or have had an ipod or itouch, or even iphone, you will know instantly how to use the Ipad. It does require you to "dock" to a pc / mac computer to initialize and register the device then again for any future file transfers (pictures, documents, videos, movies, etc. Apple calls this a synch.

Short report.... summed up, my family needed an additional "laptop" mainly for internet and quick documents. This fits the bill and is very FUN to use!! Better yet, the ibooks e-reader is fantastic and free! And you can download ibooks from their store or from Amamzon's kindle store. All the books are there on kindle, but magazine and newspapers not yet available for the ipad.

Trends - New Horizon Report for K-12's has relevance for libraries

http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/2010-Horizon-Report-for-K-12-Released.html