As the very proud owner of an iPod touch as well as a hand me down iPhone I was excited by the purchase my husband made for my birthday of the new iPad 2 (I actually got the iPod touch last year.

It was bought from the apple store itself online, if the bank statements are right for about £479. Which is pricey I know but with my lap top on the way out, we would have been shelling out soon. Thanks to this present I don't think I'll ever need a laptop again! In comparison to other stockists I don't see much of a difference, a few pounds either side, but there is something comforting to know it came straight from apple.

It arrived within two days of being ordered, my husband asked for it to come gift wrapped, for a couple of extra pounds, so came presented in a white box ( signature apple ) with a red bow and a silver apple embossed envelope with a personal message, a nice touch I thought. Within this the iPad came in its traditional white packaging, simplistic white box with a picture of the iPad on the top, iPad written on the sides, and the apple symbol and iCloud symbol either end.

It is also worth noting that for no additional cost apple will engrave the iPad prior to delivery, which makes it very personal and a service I do not know to be offered elsewhere.

The ipad itself comes in black or white, which is basically the colour of the frame, it has the power on button at the top and the volume button at the side with the home button a the bottom. It is sleek and contemporary looking and can easily be held comfortably in your hand. It has an aluminium back with the apple logo (and my engraving). The compact size, which is slightly smaller than an a4 piece of paper is incredibly thin and is also lightweight, making it easily portable. The battery charges from empty to full in about 4 hours and lasts spprx 10 with some very intense use, to include playing videos. Setting it up to wi-fi is a very simple process also. When surfing the net, through the already installe surfari app movements are quick as is the loading of web pages. In a similar way to internet explorer you can open more than one Internet page at a time and flit between them. If you have other apple devices the usage will be second nature.

It comes complete with the dock connector to USB cable and a 10w power adaptor which is basically how you charge it. The operating system is iOS 5, which my husband was very excited about, to be completely honest this means nothing to me but I do know that all the processes within the iPad are smooth, quick and efficient.

There is a quick reference start up guide, but to be honest as long as you can work out how to turn it on ( button at top)the iPad works through the set up step by step to include initialising iCloud, which basically means apps music or books bought on other apple devices are shared with your new iPad. It does require the set up of an apple store Id, but again this is an easy process and if you already have one you can just use this. You can also buy additional storage pace through iCloud, I'm not exactly sure how this works, but my understanding is that if you use or the internal space, you can store additional things here in cyberspace, but with a connection to your account.

As with other apple products there are zillions of Apps you can download for free or for a few pounds, varying from games, to apple alternatives for word processing, to quote their previous advertising campaign, there literally is an app for everything! The iPad enables you to multi task by hitting the home button at the bottom, you can easily switch from app to app

This iPad comes with a camera facing you and also one facing the desired object, swapping between the two is very simple and this addittion to the original iPad means that you can use FaceTime and Skype. The camera itself is of an ok quality, the pctures in daylight are actually pretty good, but when the lights go low, unfortunately so does the quality.

Playing music and videos is perfect on the iPad, the sound is vey good quality and the volume reaches good levels, you can purchase dock stations for surround options. Images are sharp and very high quality, both when playing things from the app store and through I players via the Internet.

Other features already on the iPad on setup are newsstand and iBooks, whereby you can download store and read magazines, newspapers and books in addittion to the kindle app the can be connected directly to amazon. You can set up your email account and retrieve mail directly to your iPad, obviously as pre mentioned you can access itunes and the app store, there is something called utunes which is basically an assortment of lectures and learning modules on a variety of topics as well as the new FaceTime feature. With the variety of applications available you can basically make your iPad into whatever you need it to be.

Bad points - does not come with case or screen protectors, in my experience apple products easily scratch, so I would definatly recommend getting these, they can be picked up on eBay very cheap. It is also worth knowing that if you want apps such as sat navs you will need the iPad model with 3G as this model does not have GPS

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