My 1st thoughts as an early Canadian iPad user

Here we go, I am now an happy early Canadian iPad user!  I will summarize my 1st toughts about this great little device.

1st, the unit is actually smaller than I thought.  Not sure if it is because I have big hands but looking at pictures on the web and holding it myself feel different.

2nd, the unit is actually heavier than I expected.  Not like too heavy but it does have some weight to it…more than a book of the same size but not as much as an Britannica Encyclopedia

3rd, the screen is beautiful, big, bright, vibrant and saturated.  Even at the lowest brightness setting it can be viewed very comfortably.

4th, the kids just love it.  I mean, they literally took it away and had to way until they got to bed to have some quality time with it.  The young one see it as some kind of interactive book and the older one as a gaming console.

5th, it is fast, really really fast compared to my iPhone 3G.  Not sure how it fares against the 3Gs… probably a bit faster from the limited time I spent with a freind’s 3Gs.

6th, there are a ton of good applications for it.  I mean, there is no shortage of them.

7th, some of the application won’t run in Canada due to the fact that the iPad store is not open yet in Canada.  That is ok, I will wait a month or so.

8th, I really like Air Video.  I watched an episode of Fringe on it over the wireless network and it could not be any better… even if the source was an actual avi and had to be transcoded on the fly.  I thought it actually looked better on the iPad than full blown on the iMac… might have to do with the transcoding removing the blockiness of the source and rendering a bit softer.

That is it for now!