What Is An iPad Really For?

I won a locally sponsored NCAA Tournament Bracket this year (Thank you UConn!), and the grand prize was an iPad. Needless to say I was pretty jazzed, because frankly I do not have the coin to run out and buy one of these things.

I knew the following things about this product before I picked it up:

1. It was a larger version of the iPhone and iPod Touch, but had it had no phone capabilities.

2. You could buy “apps” for it to do a variety of things.

3. It was an incredibly hyped product.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I picked up my “major award” and found myself sitting in the car holding the box for a 16GB iPad. At first I was a bit disappointed as it was only the 16GB model, and not the 32GB or 64GB version. Additionally, it was only the “1st Generation” model and not the new iPad2 model that had come out in the very recent past. But then I decided I couldn’t complain at all because this sucker was FREE, and I wouldn’t have bought the thing to begin with. The only real tragedy was that any chance at a quick re-sale on eBay or Craigslist at the “suggested retail price of $500″ was not going to happen either due to the iPad2’s recent arrival.

When I got it home, the wife and I excitedly opened it, read the simple instructions, and plugged it into my computer to link it up to iTunes. About 40 minutes later we were up and going on the thing. We had it hooked into our household Wi-Fi within minutes, and the rest was smooth and easy. We checked out the free apps, checked out the internet, played on the pre-installed YouTube app, and logged into Facebook. Yep, this is a pretty cool toy.