Anyone who has had to put up with all my shrieking on social media lately will know that The Tribune has been experiencing some technical difficulties over the last few weeks.

As it turns out, my laptop is not a coffee drinker. Goodbye to all my carefully set up files, my million and one vital links, all my remembered passwords AND MY ABILITY TO GET ANYTHING AT ALL DONE.

Luckily, this has happened to me before, and I have learned the value of insurance. Full, very expensive insurance specifically designed to cover someone who cannot hold a cup of coffee properly.

However, serendipity is a wonderful thing. During my woeful laptopless time, and just after my tax return had hit my bank account with a colossal bang, I had cause to drop in at JB HiFi. Where they had iPads on display.  Just sitting out there on the display desk where anyone could walk past, pick it up and be utterly overwhelmed by acquisitive glee.

10 minutes later I was dancing home, clutching my shiny new box of awesome (with the keyboard dock attachment and a stylish leather pouch).

It’s so sleek, so sexy, so seductive. If it was a woman it would be Christina Hendricks in a Dita Von Teese outfit.

It starts up within seconds, and doesn’t keep you waiting while it connects to networks. Changing between applications is instant and after a couple of weeks of almost constant use, I haven’t yet had anything crash or freeze (except Tweetdeck for iPad, which is utter shite). I've been a Windows user all my computing life, so this is something of a revelation.

The very few downsides I've discovered are: while the battery lasts about 10 hours, it can take up to 5 hours to fully charge on the iPad connection (twice that if you’re using an iPod or iPhone cable); the absence of a camera and USB ports limit the number of things I can do directly from the iPad without having to sync to something else first; sometimes it can make you feel like a bit of a tosser when you use it in public.

Other than that, it's awesome wrapped up in shiny.

I’ve downloaded a couple of books to it and I do like that I can get books from Amazon for a quarter of the price of getting a book delivered from the US, and that I can be reading it less than a minute after deciding that I want it.

I didn’t expect it to be particularly easy to read a whole book on the iPad, I thought the backlit screen would be too hard on the eyes after a while, and that it would be too awkward to hold, but I was wrong. It’s actually easier to read in bed than a real book (lean it up against a pillow and you don’t need to hold it at all) and the screen dims down to very comfortable levels. I’m several books in already and showing no signs of slowing.

The picture is beautiful, and works well if you want to watch a video on your own. Like all the Apple devices, getting files off and on the iPad can be a problem.  I think Apple assume that you will do everything through iTunes, which I probably would if it wasn’t so shit to use. Goodreader is a handy little app that makes moving files back and fourth from your computer to the iPad much easier.

The onscreen touch keypad is also easier to use than I thought it would be, but for something much longer than an email or status update it’s going to be as good as a physical keyboard.  Apple makes a keyboard dock that is beautiful to use and turns the iPad into a tiny laptop, so, if you’re going to shell out around $1000 for the iPad, it’s definitely worth spending an extra $88 to get the keyboard.

As you would expect, there is an app for just about everything. The iPad arrives with the basics: music, photos, email, youtube, calendar and contacts. It all syncs beautifully with Outlook and iTunes, and all works with the intuitive interface iThingys do so well. Beyond that, the app world is your oyster.

The Kindle one is a must if you’re interested in books. If you are a writer, the ipad is worth getting for Writer alone - $5.99 gets you the most beautiful and amazingly effective writing program I have ever used.

There are zillions of games if you are into that sort of thing. I didn’t think I was until my daughter put Plants vs Zombies on the iPad. At about 7 pm I asked her what it was. She showed me and the next thing I knew it was 3 in the morning. Approach with care, it’s worse than crack.

I tried just about every Twitter app on the market. Tweetdeck, which is hands down the best desktop application for twitter just does not work on the iPad. After working my way through all of them I found Twipple was the best of an OKish lot, but none of them offer the multi- column interface that makes Tweetdeck so good.

I could go on for hours about all the various apps I’ve tried; some are brilliant, some are idiotic, some are crap, but part of the fun of the iPad is playing around with them all and finding the ones that work for you.

After I bought it I did have a look around to see if there is somewhere you can get them cheaply. There isn’t. JB was about the best deal, but not by a lot.  The cheapest version is the 16GB with no 3G ($626 at the moment), which is the one I bought. It works well for me (so far) because there is just about nowhere I go that does not have wifi - home, work, local cafe and local bar all have great connections and for the few times I am somewhere else and need to check emails etc I have the phone.  3G costs another $200 or so to buy and then you’ve got to pay for a data plan as well.  However, if you don’t have a smartphone, or regular access to wireless then you pretty much have to get the 3G version.  You can also get 32GB ($756 wifi, $923 wifi & 3G) and 64GB ($874/$1048) versions.  The 16GB one is fine if you want to put a couple hundred photos and songs, plus a few dozen apps, but don’t need to store large video files or huge mail archives etc.

All-in-all, I was actually surprised by how much I love the iPad, I expected to get bored with it after the shiny novelty wore off, but it gets better and more useful the more I use it. It’s not just a toy, it’s an incredibly useful, stylish and awesome toy. FTW Steve Jobs, yes, you’ve done it again.

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