The iPad

The iPad seems to be an amazing device. I'm writing this blog using the microphone system on the iPad. I bought this iPad some months ago because I could read PDF files on the iPad with the Kindle reader, which I also installed on the iPad to read my Kindle books. I have a number of PDF files which represent books from the 18th and 19th-century for the research I'm doing for the book I'm trying to write. It is much nicer to read these books on the iPad than on my computer. At first glance it looked like the iPad was more of a toy than a working device. However with time, I'm learning that it seems to The iPad seems to be an amazing device. I'm writing this blog using the microphone system on the iPad, a very powerful computer. And it is much more useful than I had known or thought. One problem that I've been dealing with is that I have a large collection of movie files on four hard drives that I had copied from DVDs. The only way I knew how to play these movies was by attaching a PC computer to these drives in our living room(with a USB connection) and using Windows Media Center (a part of Windows 7) for playing the movies. Yesterday I discovered some software which allows me to play my movies on the hard drive attached to my PC which is upstairs in my study here in Boulder, and play the movies on either my iPad or on the AppleTV attached to our high-definition television in our living room.  This is not perfect and has bandwidth problems, dependning on the speed of the wireless system

When we traveled to Houston recently, I only took my iPad. It turns out that I needed to type some serious emails, so I went to an Apple store and bought a keyboard for the iPad. It attaches with the Bluetooth connection and works very well.

I have learned that I can see files from the cloud from dropbox, Google Docs, or Microsoft's SkyDrive. These files are all synced with my PC, and this is gives one great deal of flexibility.

I had thought that I was going to have to buy a new computer for living room in order to play our movie collection, but it seems that the iPad can do what I need, and this will save me a substantive amount of money.  We will see.

I presume I could do many of these things with other tablet computers that have come out, but the hyperbole concerning the iPad was quite intense, and for the first time in my life I bought an Apple product.  Having just read the biography of Steve Jobs this past week, it is fascinating to see how an Apple product does indeed work very well. Well done Steve!