iPad 2 Arrives

After a three week and two day wait, not that I was counting the days, of course, the Fed Ex truck finally arrived at my doorstep. Apple estimated that it would be a three to four week time span from the time I ordered the iPad to the time of delivery, so they were actually within the range that was stated from the onset. It was kind of neat to track my order over the last three days - first from where it was manufactured in China, then on to Hong Kong, then to Memphis TN and finally on to Rancho Cordova and then to my house in Elk Grove. Fed Ex made the delivery within an hour of their estimated arrival time. So all in all, not too bad!

I had already prepared my desktop PC computer prior to the arrival of my tablet. You have to sync the iPad with iTunes and you need the latest version of iTunes (10.2.2) to make it all work. So, I updated my iTunes and backed up the iTunes folder last night. The sync went without a glitch and I was up and running in minutes. The iPad 2 is a very good tablet, even with the lack of Adobe Flash and no wide screen. It has it's faults, as do all tablets, but some of those faults can be addressed via apps and software updates. Although the built-in camera has been criticized for it's lack of resolution, I'm satisfied with the first picture I took using the camera function (see blog post of Edward Hopper's painting - Chop Suey). The lighting was poor at the location where I took the shot and there was glass covering the photo I used to take the blog picture. Yet, the camera captured a decent enough shot for posting to the web. No complaints at this point. An aside, as you may know - Edward Hopper is one of my favorite artist. I have posted Hopper pictures on this blog from time-to-time. I remember from an art appreciation class I took in college that Chop Suey, showing two women in conversation at a restaurant, may depict a Doppelganger (a German word for look-alike or double). I noticed that Wikipedia also mentions this phenomenon when describing the picture. I've never been able to find out what Hopper said in regards to the possibility.

Regarding my first impressions of tho iPad 2. Web surfing is great on the device; it formats sites accurately and it is plenty fast over Wi Fi. It is also very light-weight and exceptionally compact. I bought the basic model. It only has Wi Fi and 16GB - no 3G - the $499 model, in white. For my purpose it should do just fine. I'll post an update after I download some apps and check out the video capability. More to come...