iPad Is the original iPad mini a good choice for me?

[Meister]

Yeah or 64gb mini 1 wifi only.

Typo. i paid 399,- for the mini 1 with lte and 64gb.

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It's his choice: performant tablet with low memory or crappy tablet with 60 GB.

Calling the original mini crappy is ignorant. Its an excellent tablet for the OPs needs.
It just depends on your priorities. The retina might run certain apps you use much better.
I use ms office, iworks, lightroom, safari, music/videos, notepad, documents, youtube and others without any problem.
What difference would a retina make?

 

[madrich]

Got mine. I am happy without the retina display.

 

[CEmajr]

I own a 1st Gen one as well. The retina is much faster and clearer but I don't feel the need to upgrade yet. For the things the OP said he/she wants to do it will be fine and with the sales going on right now one can get an original mini for almost half the price of the retina.

 

[Last iOS 5 user]

Mini 1 shares internals with the iPod Touch and the scren resolution with the iPad fullsize 1 and 2 and is showing its age with 3.5 year old hardware and will become crashy and nearly unusable with the new iOS 8. Retina has a clearer screen and 64-bit processor (like a computer) so it would be worth shelling out the extra cash because with that processor it can probably last for many more iOS versions to come. It would become cheaper when the iPad Mini 3 comes out later in the year.

 

[Meister]

... and will become crashy and nearly unusable with the new iOS 8...

... utter nonsense!

Btw you are not the last iOS5 user. I run iOS 4.3.3 on my ipad1.

 

[Last iOS 5 user]

... utter nonsense!

Btw you are not the last iOS5 user. I run iOS 4.3.3 on my ipad1.

Well i am the last one at my work and pretty much in my area

 

[roberthodgson]

Get the retina version the screen is so much sharper and the test is a lot easier to read with the better screen.

I looked at the iPad mini (non Retina) first to save the money but the screen
Difference on the retina version was way to of a difference I ended up with the 32gb Retina LTE model. It's great to have the option to add cellular data when traveling. The lte model also has a gps chip so it doubles as a large screen gos for traveling.

At home (Toronto Canada) I have added the iPad to my data share plan and when we head to Disney this Christmas I will swap out the sim with an AT&T sim
and will have data access for the entire drive there and back as we'll as in the park.

Not all hotels have reliable wifi so that's why I have always gone with the cellular version on all my iPads right from the first gen.

 

[Rodster]

As nice of a deal the Mini was for $199, I returned it. The screen was pretty bad just for web browsing, no matter if I used bold text. I had to settle for using it in landscape mode. Then I compared my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 next to the Mini and the Tab 4 had an amazing screen compared to the Mini.

If I get a Mini it will be the rMini.