Well here we are, magical unicorns in hand, taking over the world one PC diehard at a time.
When I started drafting this my intent was that it’d be a pretty comprehensive outline of my experiences switching to an iPad full time. As luck would have it, something is popping on the work front that is going to require my full time and focus for the next week or two at least. The bad news is that it leaves me (much) less time to be as thorough about this as i’d like.
That said, here are some early thoughts…
Have spent much time vetting Goodreader and Air Sharing. For the moment, though I prefer Air Sharing’s interface (though even it is not without issues…) it appears at GR will be my goto file system for now. Primary reasons:
– I wirelessly loaded the same 20GB of documents into each. GR took about 2/3 as long for whatever reason.
– Connected both to my IMAP server so I could easily grab mail attachments. AS only sees my inbox while GR sees all nested subfolders as well. AS is supposed to be able to see these too but does not in my case, perhaps an issue with my hosting co. Either way important to me.
– Searching for files on GR is an order of magnitude faster than it is on AS. Maybe the amount of files i have is choking AS’s search tool, but it’s painful for me. Type a key. Freeze while it searches. Type a second key. Freeze while it pares the list. Type a key. Freeze while it pares the list again. You get the idea. GR is not instantaneous as say spotlight on the Mac, but it’s functionally fast.
– I have been successfully able to print from AS but GR does not yet provide this functionality. For the moment i can open-in AS from GR and print from it. Not exactly elegant though ultimately functional! Have asked the GR devs about printing…if its not added i may look into one of the dedicated Print apps rather than use AS just for that.
Typing has been a breeze. Haven’t even sat the iPad in the dock or used the BT keyboard. I work from home much of the time, and the iPad has untethered me from my desk which is an unexpected godsend.
My IMAP account *does* allow me to continue the search on the server when searching emails. It doesn’t do so on the iPhone so i was worried. Thank goodness or i might’ve switched hosting companies 😀
WSJ and NYT apps are disappointing, as are most dedicated media apps (except ABC which i love). Safari on the other hand has completely changed my throats about surfing the web. Just…wow. Completely.
Bloomberg doesn’t show you the dividend or div yield on a given stock. Wait. What???
Hate that when connected to iTunes there’s no way to filter apps by type as shown in the apps section of itunes itself.
App store on iPad is terrible. They better be working on something to fix this!
Pages and Numbers good though have to get more used to their interfaces. Haven’t spent much time in these apps.
Reading is great whether in Kindle app, iBooks or the Free Books app. Kindle2 is for sale.
I am more convinced than ever that with some simple improvements on Apples part, and/ or incremental improvements to apps like Goodreader, the iPad could serve as a primary computer for anyone not coding, doing hardcore video or photo editing, or the like.
Sorry i don’t have more time at the moment to be more thorough and organized. Thanks for reading,
The iPad Alone 
Regarding filtering iTunes apps by type: view in list view and add the “kind” column.
The iWork apps are marvels of what can be done on an iPad. Paradoxically, they are also all but unseable for many users:
– file sync is none existent. Enough has been said on this topic by others.
– Tons of file formatting is lost in translation. You can read specifically on my wiki at http://www.ijoel.com (under the personal productivity strategies section)
I too have found a struggle between AR and GR. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
By the way DropBox just went iPad native. Looks good.
If younliked safari, give these two a try:
– instapaper (and add the bookmark let to both desktop and mobile safari)
– netnewswire. NNW blew me away. Changed my entire web-consuming experience. And I have been using NNW on Mac since v1. Same with iPhone. The iPad implementation is even betteer than the desktop version, which I don’t been use anymore.
Can that filtering be done on the actual sync set up screen? I don’t seem to see that. I do see the filtering in the apps section of the iTunes library…
Btw using Feedler free version for now. Still debating whether i like a feed reader or visiting sites themselves directly.