It’s been about 4 months since I got my iPad. After the initial amazement of a GIANT iPhone wore off, I was left with a tool that meets most of the needs I was imagining the iPad would meet. And I still use it with joy.

Here are some of the things I love and hate about it:

Portability. I used to walk around with a giant backpack, into which I stuffed a laptop, an SLR camera, and sometimes a second laptop. I moved around like a laden camel. Now, I just have a small handbag to hold the iPad, my phone, wallet, and Tech Liminal leaflets.

Battery Life. 8 hours or more. I am no longer that person in the coffeeshop looking for a plug.

Presentations. I give a lot of presentations. With Keynote on the iPad I can just whip one out at any time. It’s harder to author presentations than on a computer, but if you are just using text and shapes, it’s pretty snappy. The 9″ screen makes it viable to show these off and have a conversation at the same time.

Reading books. There are a couple of apps for reading books. IBooks is pretty good, as is the Kindle app. They all let you turn the brightness up and down, make bookmarks, and remember their place. I find that using the iPad as a reference library is pretty handy – and tends to interrupt my work less. I use GoodReader to download PDF’s and HTML reference pages. GoodReader crashes on the bigger files, which is unfortunate, but it’s great for looking up that darn PHP function whose arguments I can’t remember.

Music everywhere. The speakers on the iPad are mighty enough that I use it as a radio wherever I happen to be: cooking in the kitchen, gardening, hanging out with friends.

There are a couple of downsides:

The web is not touch-screen ready. AJAX knickknacks and rollover states on websites don’t all work. So, for example, I can’t just go into my WordPress blog and start writing.

It’s really slippery. Without a case, I would have hurled my iPad out the window by mistake. Fortunately, there are a lot of cases out there, which will give you a form-factor and handholds that you can really use.

I wrote this blog post on my iPad, even, using the WordPress app. Note the lack of links and most formatting.

What about you? Do you love it? Hate it? Wish we would stop gushing about it?