I didn’t need one. Shamefully I have a perfectly functional ASUS “gaming” netbook, which has served me very well as a portable device. I also have a smartphone, so I can download as many free apps as I feel I need to, and play Angry Birds if ever the desire arises.

I was just feeling left out, so I bought one. Call me Ms Moneybags.

I have to say, I do like it a lot. I can just get home from work, flop on the sofa in front of the telly, and check all those pesky internet things that need to be checked – no hassle. The thing is on and ready in seconds and it’s the perfect size and weight to just have on my legs as I’m curled up watching Bargain Hunt. My netbook has been sitting in its bag under the printer since I got the thing, and it means I don’t have to boot up The Beast of a computer unless I want to do things that I’d be more comfortable at a desk for anyway, like gaming or photo editing.

As a result, I love tablets. These things are terrific. Do I love Apple iPads? Of that I’m not so sure.

I don’t really consider myself a high-end user of gadgets like this at all. Some of the other members of the Shift RunStop team would be able to pick holes all over the Apple product methodology, calling the iOS a ‘closed system’ and complaining about iTunes. What exactly it was they wanted to do with an ‘open system’ was always a mystery to me, but needless to say Apple’s way of doing things has rubbed a lot of tech nerds up completely the wrong way.

Me though? I wanted to turn something on and have it work. I didn’t want to spend hours browsing developer forums for alternative ROMs. I didn’t want to overclock anything or jailbreak anything. I just wanted to turn it on and go. You can with an iPad.

However, when I came to preparing for a long trip overseas, I did start to get a little unhappy with the thing. I planned to load the iPad up with movies, music and ebooks, to keep me amused on the 24 hour journey I was facing. I was frustrated to discover that the “drag and drop” methodology that we have all grown to rely on, is something that the iPad doesn’t understand past simple MP3 files.

To load up ebooks onto my tablet I had to import them all using a eReader app, going into the app on itunes and browsing to wherever they are kept on my pc/network. To put a movie onto the iPad you have to actually convert whatever movie files you have into iPad format and then add them to the library. Converting is easy you say? Well yes. But once I found some software that would do it (Apple don’t provide such a thing) it took over 12 hours to convert the list of movies I wanted to take with me, and I’m pretty sure that was only around 20GB-worth. 20GB of movies already in digital format that is, playable on any good (and usually free) media players. Why the iPad can’t handle the usual formats is unfathomable.

Herein lies the mystery: The iPad, as a tool, is the very pinnacle ease of use and good consumer experience. Yet when it comes to doing anything other than surfing the web and playing games, Apple seem to have intentionally forgotten the last 10 years of UI development and information storage. The thing doesn’t even have a USB port, I can’t browse our home network and just yoink files at will, and if I want to actually organise anything that I’ve put on the iPad I need to be at a PC, wired up.

Once everything was loaded up the iPad went back to being a dream to use of course. The battery life just seemed to keep on going, movie after movie, and the speed and ease of use when you want to do any of the things Apple are happy about is impressive and a total breath of fresh air from years of waiting on Windows. But as you may have gathered, the iPad is far from ideal.

I want a tablet now that works as well as the iPad does when it’s at its best, but has the usefulness and functionality that I’ve got used to with Windows. Since beginning this review, I have actually dusted off the old netbook so that I could browse to the home network and watch some old Farscape episodes wirelessly from my bedroom, and to plug in my SD cards to move photos around from a recent trip. If I could do things like that easily with the iPad then I think I would be sold completely.

As it stands, I now pretty much just use the iPad as a really nice tool for browsing the internet and occasionally fiddling with Astronomy apps. But I guess that’s ok; I do do a lot of browsing after all.

About my iPad: I purchased the 16GB WiFi version of the iPad 2 in Black. Unless you’re planning on using it for storage, 16GB should just about be enough for a long trip, including several hefty apps. And for roaming Internet, I used my Samsung Galaxy S as a hotspot, using my existing generous data plan instead of having to purchase a second one.

Addendum: I’ve no idea why this thing has a camera.