iPad as document/book reader now or next year

[Romulus]

I already have an MBA that comes with me a lot... But it's kind of awkward to read books/PDFs on the laptop. It works great if I need to reference a PDF searching for paragraphs or looking at the images, but when I want to just go through an entire medical journal or read a chapter from a .chm book, it's a bit awkward...

I think it's ultimately the horizontal layout... or perhaps I'm just justifying wanting an iPad... but then I would end up at least sometime carrying both the iPad and MBA... yet the iPad would help eliminating at least a heavy book out of the bag... hmmm... What do you guys think? How is the iPad as a .pdf reader and a book reader, especially .chm or .pdf books... That's my main goal for the iPad... which is the reason I would probably wait until iPad 2 if it's lighter and thinner...

 

[KeriJane]

The iPad makes a very excellent reader as well as an excellent all around mobile device.
You will probably end up leaving the MBA at home a lot of the time.

I suggest just getting an iPad if you want one. Waiting for iPad2 is probably going to be awhile. All of these rumors about v2.0 being just around the corner are probably wishful thinking. Under development, yes. About to be released? Unlikely.

Why?
They're having to build a new factory to keep up with demand! What's the incentive to change it in the short term? Coming out with v.2.0 of a runaway best seller is silly when demand is still very high for v1.0.

Apple isn't big on major changes immediately after a launch. There will be incremental upgrades like maybe an iSight or the "better" A4 CPU that the iPhone got. But a whole new form factor? Thinner, Lighter? Probably not anytime soon.
Think for a minute: How many YEARS did Apple run with the original MBA? About 2 and a half. And that wasn't anything like the sensation the iPad has been so there was more incentive to update it.
I suspect that iPad2 is at least that far in the future.

I love my iPad to pieces,

Happy Thanksgiving!
Keri

 

[anjinha]

The iPad is perfect for reading. It's one of the reasons I got one and it didn't disappoint me one bit.

As for whether you should wait for iPad 2 or not, you could wait for it but there's no guarantee that it will be lighter and thinner, and if it's not you'll end up waiting for nothing (it's probably going to be at least March or April until it comes out).

 

[Romulus]

Is the closed environment of file transfer through iTunes only, etc a problem... Many of the textbooks I have are chm format... I use Chmox on the Mac, there are iOS versions of chm readers, but then I see the file transfer issues across the forum... would that be an issue?

 

[iSax1234]

Think for a minute: How many YEARS did Apple run with the original MBA? About 2 and a half. And that wasn't anything like the sensation the iPad has been so there was more incentive to update it.
I suspect that iPad2 is at least that far in the future.
Keri

Haha I highly doubt the we will see the iPad 2 in 2012-2013! The Macbook Air has been much more experimental than loathing for sales. Apple has created the tablet market and have intentions on keeping their large portion of market share. So we'll see an iPad 2 this spring. The iPad will keep a product cycle like almost all Apple Products 1 year.

 

[Ciclismo]

Is the closed environment of file transfer through iTunes only, etc a problem... Many of the textbooks I have are chm format... I use Chmox on the Mac, there are iOS versions of chm readers, but then I see the file transfer issues across the forum... would that be an issue?

I just went through Dropbox and box.net (at uni so that it wouldn't cost me anything and uploading to the web was super-quick). The upside is that once in the "cloud", you effectively had a back-up copy available wherever there is internet, which is great if you lost your device or needed to reload a file for some reason whilst out and about.

On a related note, I absolute loved the iPad when it came to assignments. I wrote several of them on the iPad, but it was also great to be able to bookmark multiple pages and highlight certain quotes so that when it came to writing an essay or research report it was very easy to flip through to the reference.

Oh, and while we are on the subject of references, let me introduce you to my good friend bibme.org which makes properly formatting references a breeze. It literally saved me hours of work last semester (and it's FREE!!).