Ipad

So I finally saw one in town today, at the big Apple shop in Buchanan Street. It was quite impressive. It feels very, very nice to hold in your hands. The screen quality is good. It looks like it would be terrific for reading comics, magazines and books, in that order. I tend to prefer non-backlit books - hence my Sony Reader - but ebooks I've bought for work or reference are ones I tend to prefer looking at on a screen anyway, and in that respect the Ipad is perfect for that kind of random browsing (although I must say I thought the letters in the 'Pooh' book included in the Ipad I played around with looked relatively low-resolution compared to my E-ink reader). In all respects, it appears to be a fabulous toy.

And yet, and yet...

I didn't feel as excited as I thought I would. This may be a certain over-familiarity with it from following the news about it online for some months, and it may also be the outrageous price: £430. It was fun, but not necessarily more fun than, say, the Macbook on which I'm writing just now, which is by far and away the very best computer I have ever owned. A desire to get back into reading magazines and comics without necessarily owning printed objects is not enough, unfortunately, to justify that kind of price tag.

So I guess I feel just a tiny bit disappointed, or perhaps I should say not as knocked out as I was hoping to be. Perhaps I would have to use it more, although I did play around with it for quite a while. It was cool, rather than awesome. Would I still like one? Yeah, maybe. For half the price.