Suze, patience is a virtue! You'll get one. But if you only want
it to read books, then an Ipad would be an expensive way of doing
it. Amazon flog their Kindle for a fraction of the price. But
that is all that it will do, ie great for reading books.

The Ipad seems to come into its own, for doing a bit of everything,
but with a reasonably sized screen, unlike the Iphone.

Interesting and worthwhile comments.

I have pdf's coming out of my ears and am looking for something more portable to read them. The beach, the pub, the cafe, late at night in bed, even the shared seats in the mall would break up being stuck in the office.

Would love a stand alone pdf reader but there isn't one.

The iPad has been on my radar for awhile now and as my family, friends, peers and colleagues have all offered their 2 bob I wouldn't mind an opinion from people I never met!

Neutral, I had a bit of a look at the App store and under the
business section I saw a couple of high rating pdf reader apps.
One costs $1.19, the other costs $5.99. Both had pretty good
reviews from people who had bought them.

I'm starting to understand why people pay a bit extra for Apple
products and why the company is booming as it is. They really
put that bit of extra thought into things, unlike MS, who tried
to force Bing and Ninemsn down my throat, when I upgraded my
computer to Windows 7. Even with Windows 7 I'm getting some
technical issues which nobody seems to be able to answer.

So far I've had no issues at all with either the Ipad, which is
version 2, or the Mac laptop, which I bought at the same time.

No wonder the institutions are calling for the CEOs head at
Microsoft, they are falling behind, it seems.

Yabby, yeah I have checked out the pdf apps and it all looks good.

I suppose my query was more around 'the practability and robustness of reading the screen in different locations' rather than the pdf readers themselves. Some people reckon yep no worries the iPad will do the job for you while others say it's all hype and wouldn't be rugged enough.

I note your MS comments and would suggest that moving to 7 from XP (or wotever) is a downgrade rather than an upgrade.

As an old dos->linux hand I well understand the angst of MS users. It is a topic worthy of it's own thread!

Neutral, well yup, the tablets do look a bit lightweight, the Ipad
is pretty thin. So far mine has survived, despite the dog jumping
on it. I think the little roll down cover which they sell as
an extra, is worth it, plus a padded case so that you can bang them
around a bit during transport etc. Certainly in my case, anyhow.

There are alot more tablets on the way, some using Google software.
We've actually had the Linux, Apple, MS debate on OLO. Each to their
own I guess. I don't want to frig around and want something that
works how I expect it to work, when I switch it on. Then I can
turn my mind to other things. But there are a number of Linux fans
here.

Yabby, how long have you had yours?

I like the sound of it surviving the dog ...a few weeks ago I had to walk around the back yard between licks and tummy rubs ringing my mobile until I found the spot to dig it up. Also found a spare set of keys, my favourite stubby holder and a bone.

Have heard the roll down cover can get magnetically askew??

I'll probably buy one ...just typing away enough to justify and convince myself.

My wife just said "If you can put the 20 tonnes of top soil you got today for the garden exactly where I want it, you can have an iPad."

There ya go...