So I bought myself an iPad about a month ago; and now that I’ve had it and have been using it for a while, it’s time to give my impressions.

When the iPad first came out, I was extremely skeptical. I’m a programmer by profession; I like computers that I can do things to. I like to get to a command line. I like to write programs. I like to write in general, and as I’m a touch-typist, I like a real keyboard. It seemed to me that it might be nice for folks who mostly do e-mail and web browsing, but that I’d find it too limiting.

About a year ago I bought an Asus net book, on which I ran Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. I got it for two reasons: to take on trips, and as a note-taking machine. I’m doing a lot of studying these days, and I like to take notes in a mindmapping app called Freemind. The net book is good for this; it’s small enough to carry around, has good battery life, and Freemind runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, which is what I use at home.

But…although the net book is small, it’s not all that small. I have a tiny little Jansport backpack I like to take with me on walks, and the Asus doesn’t quite fit comfortably. I had to get a bigger backpack, which is really too big, and is much less comfortable on hot days.

And then, there are hardware problems. After about six months, for example, I needed to replace the power adaptor. And one day while I was out, the trackpad stopped working. As I had no mouse with me, I was out of luck. (It started working again later.)

And then, there are software problems. I prefer to use Linux rather than Windows, and Ubuntu is a reasonable Linux distro. But the version I was using (karmic) had some serious quirks on my particular box; and when I tried to upgrade it to the next version (lucid) it stopped working altogether.

So I took another look at the iPad. I’d gotten an iPhone by this time, and was surprised and pleased at how pleasant it was to use; and I’d become quite fond of a mindmapping app for the iPhone called iThoughts. Suddenly, the iPad looked a lot more appealing. I played with one at the Apple Store, and did some research on the available applications, and about a month ago I bought one.

So, how it does it stack up against my netbook? Very well indeed.

First of all, it’s much more available. For use at home, the netbook has no particular advantage over my regular laptop, and consequently to save the battery I always have to shut it all the way down between uses. That means that I have to wait for it to boot up when I want to use it. The iPad, by comparison, uses very little power when it’s asleep; and when you want it, it turns on the moment you press the button. As a result, I end up using it much more often than I used the netbook.

Second, it syncs nicely with my main laptop. Getting data to and from the netbook was always a bit of a pain; I don’t have that issue with the iPad. There’s certainly room for improvement, but it’s easier.

Third, it’s a great mindmapping and note-taking tool. I use iThought’s big brother, iThoughts HD, and I love it. I was afraid that the virtual on-screen keyboard would be a serious hindrance; but in fact, I prefer taking notes on the iPad over the netbook. The iPad simply takes up less room. I can put it on the table directly in front of in, rotated to landscape mode so that the keyboard is as large as possible. Then I can put the book I’m studying on the table just beyond the iPad, where it’s easy to read, and I can switch effortlessly from looking at one to looking at the other. With the netbook I had to put the material I was studying and the netbook side by side, which meant that I had to turn to an odd angle to type.

The virtual keyboard isn’t as nice as a real keyboard, but I find I can touch type on it remarkably well, and it’s much less of an issue than I had feared.

Fourth, the iPad makes a decent book reader. It’s not as good in sunlight as my Kindle, not by a long shot, and it’s heavier, which is a nuisance. But it’s not at all bad, either; and with the Kindle app I can read all of the books I’ve bought for the Kindle. I’ve not bought any books from Apple’s “iBooks” store, but iBooks is a great app for reading free “ePub”-format e-books, and I’ve done some of that as well. In theory you can read e-books on a netbook; some apps even let you hold the netbook sideways, so that you can read pages in portrait mode rather than landscape. It sounds rather unpleasant to me.

Fifth, the iPad takes remarkably little maintenance. It’s true that I have little control over the operating system, and no ability to write software for it in my chosen language, or to write private applications solely for my own use in any language. But on the other hand, the darn thing just works. It’s not a general computer; it’s an appliance. And as such, it meets a need and meets it quite well.

In short, I like it, and I’m glad I bought it.