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By Chris Meadows

ipad1[1] Wayne MacPhail, a Canadian online media professor, has written a piece for the Globe and Mail about how much of a part of his life his iPad remains five months on from its introduction. He talks about all aspects of its use, how when he takes it out at coffee shops people inevitably notice.

In fact, he goes into all sorts of uses he’s made of it—gaming, writing, and naturally e-books and comics.

To my wife’s astonishment and amusement, I’m half way through a book about the history of the battery. “A book?” she asks. “A whole book? About batteries? Really?” and have been through a half dozen other Kindle titles in bed, on the beach (not the best experience), and lounging in the living room. On the subject of batteries, five months in, my iPad lasts long days without going below 25% capacity.

Of course, e-books are far from the only thing to read with the iPad—feed and other readers such as Reeder and Flipboard abound.

I have personally found the iPad I have gets a lot of attention whenever I bring it out. A few weeks ago, an elderly couple saw me using it at my favorite bar and asked me about it, and I was able to bring up Google and find where a pub near where they would soon be staying in Chicago—then locate it and show them a satellite image in Google Maps.

I have actually seen two of them in use in the breakroom where I work—a bit surprising given that the Human Capital interviewer told me not to bring mine to work when she noticed I had it on me during the interview because it would be considered a “laptop”.

And the other day a fellow iPad user at a coffeehouse demonstrated Apple’s standard iPad case to me and suggested I should go ahead and get one as it entirely changed the way he used his device. I’ll have to look into that.

And naturally, I’ve been e-reading a lot myself. I find that iBooks is a great reader for loading my entire Baen library into and keeping it with me at all times. I could do that in Stanza, of course, but it didn’t have ease of loading from iTunes or the appealing visual device of the bookshelf.

 
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