Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Initial impression – I like the iPad. Let’s not forget how far hardware has advanced in two years.

Me and My iPad (Awful Photo)

I bought an iPad this morning.

I have a model with WiFi and 16 Gigabytes of memory. As most people already know, it doesn’t have:

• a phone
• 3G
• a camera (neither video nor still)
• GPS

After only a few hours:

• The screen is great.
• This is an excellent televiewer.
• There are many books I can download and read at no cost.
• Watching videos I made of my grandson are worth the price alone.
• The battery life is wonderful.

Speaking of price…

The ASUS eee - Only Two Years Ago

Here is a photo of the ASUS eee – the “first” netbook computer. It had 4 Gigabytes of solid-state disk. It ran a flavor of Linux and came loaded with a few free and open source pieces of software. The screen was 7″ diagonal. The ASUS made our mouths water, especially considering the price.

Price: $400

Today’s iPad has a 10″ touchscreen, runs some sort of Apple operating system with loads of applications, and has 16 GigaBytes of storage.

Price: $500

What amazes me is that the ASUS is from only two years ago. Hardware has advanced more leaps and bounds  in only two years. There are other companies out there who are making devices like the iPad for the same price with more hardware in them than the iPad.

It is easy to forget where we were only two years ago.