Product Features

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology. 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi).
• 16GB flash drive with 1Ghz Apple A4 custom-designed system on a chip.
• Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology
• Box Contents:iPad Dock Connector to USB Cable 10W USB Power Adapter Documentation

Processor, Memory, and Motherboard

• Hardware Platform: Mac
• Number of Processors: 1
• RAM: 256 MB
• RAM Type: DIMM

Hard Drive

• Size: 16.00 GB
• Type: IDE

Cases and Expandability

• Size (LWH): 9.56 inches, 7.47 inches, 0.5 inches
• Weight: 1.5 pounds

Wireless

• Wireless Type: 802.11 A/B

Warranty and Support

• Amazon.com Returns Policies: You may return any new computer purchased from Amazon.com that is “dead on arrival,” arrives in damaged condition, or is still in unopened boxes, for a full refund within 30 days of purchase. Amazon.com reserves the right to test “dead on arrival” returns and impose a customer fee equal to 15 percent of the product sales price if the customer misrepresents the condition of the product. Any returned computer that is damaged through customer misuse, is missing parts, or is in unsellable condition due to customer tampering will result in the customer being charged a higher restocking fee based on the condition of the product. Amazon.com will not accept returns of any desktop or notebook computer more than 30 days after you receive the shipment. New, used, and refurbished products purchased from Marketplace vendors are subject to the returns policy of the individual vendor.

5 Responses to “Apple iPad MB292LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi)”

1. Hazel Green says:

   April 25, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Many reviews have said it (reviews by Apple fanboys and worshippers should be taken with a pinch of salt).

   - Good ‘instant-on’ device for short quick activities like email; but don’t expect to type anything longer than a tweet or text message; painfully slow and impractical. As a typer, I tend to rest my fingers on the keyboard – but that is BAD for a touchscreen. For longer emails or typing, I almost always find myself switching to my laptop.

   - Very good looks and sleek; good battery life (I go up to 8-10 hours on a single charge)

   - The browser doesn’t works with more than half of the websites that I normally browse.

   - I get neck pain/strain after a while trying to type and read on the same ‘plane’ (un-natural posture)

   - It is NOT a laptop replacement (let alone a killer); it needs a laptop as the ‘mothership’ for initial setup, software updates, etc. Actually, it uses the same OS as the iPhone/iPod and is identical to an iPod with a bigger screen.

   - I always find myself using my iPhone than iPad; iPad is too big to carry in a pocket and too small to be practical and useful like a laptop.

   - Can’t print anything from it;
   Frankly, I had my doubts about this device when it was first announced. Looking at the specifications, this 9.7 inch device running iPhone OS simply begged to be called “a larger iPod Touch”.

   Trying the device for the first time, however, completely changed my mind about this device. It’s not the hardware specification that matters, it’s the EXPERIENCE.

   Using the device is an amazing experience. The only word I am going to describe this experience is “LIBERATING”.

   I have a 27in iMac, a 19in custom built PC, and i’ve owned a unibody MacBook Pro before. In actual usage, none of them allow me to surf the web lying face-up on bed, or lying sideways on a sofa, yet all of them confine my hands to a mouse/trackpad and a keyboard.

   Whereas the iPad gives me so much freedom. I find myself using it lying on bed, on a sofa, and even standing. When I think back about my previous computing experience, I can’t help but to ask myself: “Why should I confine myself to use my own computer in an upright position with my butt glued to a chair and my hands stuck on a table?” In fact, i find myself using this device even more than my beloved 27in iMac simply because it invites me to use it everywhere without boundary.

   Obviously, you can argue that an smartphone or an iPod Touch can also be used in such a fashion. But allow me to convince you, the display on this device makes all the difference. The display is a 9.7 inch LED backlit IPS display that offers stunning color, and an unbelievable viewing angle. I can literally look at the screen at an angle nearly parallel to the it and still be able to see the amazing image. The screen resolution is also optimal for viewing websites, since most websites are designed for a 1024×768 resolution. This means that no zooming or panning is required when viewing websites on the iPad.

   The form factor is just right, holding it in hand feels great. It feels extremely sturdy and yet a pleasure to touch. The body of the device is extremely clean and minimalist.

   The device is extremely fast, scrolling feels very fluid, the entire OS is very responsive. The Multi Touch interface is intuitive and fun to use. The battery life is simply superb, i’ve used it continuously for more than 10 hours with constant video/music playback and occasional gaming.

   Obviously this iPad is not going to do programming, encoding videos, or music production. (Some VNC apps do let you control your computer from your iPad) But for my casual computing needs like music/video, web browsing, youtube, facebook and light gaming, this excellent device presents a better experience than traditional laptops. It is a great complementary device to my iMac, with apps like Air Sharing HD and LogMeIn Ignition, i can even access local storage on my iMac from my iPad through local wifi or the internet.

   Overall, the iPad is a remarkable device, and i am not afraid to say that it gave me the best computing experience i’ve ever had.
2. John S. Dean says:

   April 26, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Just to set the stage correctly – I’m a multiple Microsoft MVP winner for the tablet PC platform. I’ve been using tablets since their inception in the early 2000′s and have used Windows since 1988. I’ve been programming since 1981. My level of knowledge is way, way up there. And until last July, I never even considered a Mac product. Everything I needed to do was available on Windows, most of the critical apps of mine weren’t even available for the Mac OS.

   Last spring I purchased another car, and I’ve long had MP3 players, but never an Ipod. This new car had direct plug access to the Ipods, and allowed all the metadata to display on the radio head unit, as well as full control via the steering wheel controls. So I got an Ipod, my first Apple device. For the heck of it I threw the little Apple sticker on my back window and watched everyone who knew me, employees and clients alike (I’m the director of an IT consulting firm), freak out when they saw the apple on my car.

   Then last July a friend of mine showed me his new Macbook pro, and what got me was the hardware, NOT the software. The touchpad was just magical, and after trying it, there was no other input method to compare, and all the windows machines had nothing that felt like this glass surfaced beauty. The backlit keyboard, the solid body (My last two Lenovo’s had cracks in their shells just from grabbing one side and picking them up), the design of the hardware was just light years past anything ever done on a PC. And with the new ones running on the intel processor, and able to directly run windows, not just virtually, it made sense for me to get one. So I did.

   Then last November I replaced my 1 year old Media center PC with a new Dell Zino, and a month after that replaced THAT with a new Mac Mini. So in about 5 months, I went from a Mac hater to someone who had an ipod, a macbook pro, and a Mac Mini.

   So when the iPad was announced, people weren’t sure where I’d fall. I was a longtime Mac hater, now a convert, but this “first ever tablet device” was hardly that, Microsoft has been doing tablets for a long time. And my initial take was very, very negative. Like most of the talking heads out there who didn’t like it, I was wondering what possible use something that wasn’t a real OS would be, something that can’t multitask, and, for my tablet background, why on earth there’s no support for pens. For me, the best thing about tablets and slates has always been notetaking. I loved MS Journal, and Onenote. Not for *converting* the handwriting to text, but for persisting my notes IN handwriting. I liked it. Worked great. And the form factor on this device would have been outstanding for such activity.

   But no joy, we all know how Jobs hates pens. Don’t know why, he thinks it’s an “outdated” method of input or some such, yet he puts keyboards on everything, which, according to his type of thinking, should also by now be an outdated type of input…

   So I had no plans on getting one. I have been waiting for more info on the HP Slate, which would run Windows 7, have multitasking ability, all the things I was used to on a slate.

   But I kept thinking about the battery life. And the form factor. I use a kindle daily, and this would be a great replacement for it since, while I liked the concept, both versions of the device I’ve had just still didn’t do it for me. My eyes don’t get strained from conventional monitors and displays so it didn’t benefit me at all to have the paper ink, but it WOULD benefit me to have a backlit device again for night time reading. And since the iBook app supposedly would allow me to open other books I already had (I’ve been doing ebooks for years and years before the kindle was ever announced, reading them on my windows PDA phones and comptuers), there was potential here.

   But I kept going to the single use, non comptuer OS, limitations.

   But I also start to twitch when there’s a new toy available. So I started thinking about what I do with computers, both for work and at home, and realized that I didn’t *NEED* a full windows 7 slate device with multitasking and everything, since I did not want a second “main” computer. I keep EVERYTHING for both work and my entire personal life on my laptop, so getting the HP would then necessitate a lot of syncing of data between both the windows side of my macbook as well as the mac side. Something I don’t like dealing with.

   So I realized I didn’t want a full computer. I didn’t need the ipad to replace anything, or take over any existing functionality of my computers. I wanted it to take over my kindle, and maybe give me some fun drawing apps to play with my 6 year old in. So I decided to give it a try.

   So two days ago I ran to the local brick and mortar, figuring they’d be sold out, but at least I could play with a demo unit and see what it was like, get myself past my preconceptions and all the BS flying on the blogosphere. I picked one up, held it, and two store associates were playing with the one next to me. I asked them how quickly they sold out – they told me they didn’t, that Apple did a great job stocking them, and they had all versions still left. I decided to not even play with the demo, but just take one home. So I grabbed the 16GB version (knowing I didn’t need it for an ipod and such, so 16GB would be sufficient) and went home.

   Unboxed quickly since there’s nothing but the unit, USB cable, and power adapter. Came fully charged, so I was up and running instantly. Within about 15 minutes I had 70 free apps installed already and was moving through things like a pro. And it dawned on me that even if i wanted that HP Windows 7 based slate, it would NEVER be this smooth. That is one place where Apple just dominates – the UI. And this one was great. Everything worked intuitively, the apps were well designed, and I found my conversions of some of my ebooks to EPUB format installed just fine in Itunes, and showed up just beautifully in iBook. So the reading experience became way better instantly than the kindle could be. And with the kindle software available, I can already get the books I purchased there as well, so i had the best of both worlds.

   The drawing apps were a big hit for my 6 year old, who, like any kid, loves finger painting.

   Weather apps abound, my favorite so far is weatherbug (not a shock, theirs was my favorite gadget for Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well). I’ve had storms here, heavy, severe, over the last few days, and my usual thing when dealing with storms at night, while I’m laying in bed reading my kindle, is to randomly get up, go into the great room, and check out the local weather satellites from a few local news stations, see what is still heading this way, how heavy, etc, maybe check mail again while I’m there, then go back and read some more, repeat a few times over an hour or two. So this time, I just changed form iBook to Weatherbug, saw instantly the local radar, what was still on the way, then hopped into the browser, checked all my mail accounts (the built in Microsoft Exchange support is seamless and works great BTW), and enjoyed the browser, which works and looks just as well as my Safari does on the macbook pro. So without having to leave my toasty bed, I was reading, checked three weather sites, three mail accounts, and was back reading, all flawlessly, no running around my house.

   The last part I tried finally last night was instant message, which for me is critical since all my employees use it to keep in touch with me, as do a couple friends. With the push technology, all the “you can’t do this and that at once” fell apart for me and was debunked. I already had noted that my ipad, regardless of what I was doing or what app I had open, chimed i had a new mail on my works’ exchange server before even my smart phone, or my computer directly connected to my exchange server. And so went my experience with IM as well. I loaded a client I’ve used in windows, then closed the IM program and opened iBook, and a buddy of mine sent me a message. I got not just the notification, but a bubble with his text actually opened in front of ibook, and had a choice of switching over to reply or just close the text bubble and keep reading. So that really rid me of all concerns about the lack of multitasking since that gives me exactly what I need – notification of an email or an IM while I’m doing something else. This is all the computing power I needed on this.

   So I finally realized I didn’t WANT another tablet PC, another full fledged computer. I wanted something to fill a need between my phone’s screen and my computer. Something to replace my kindle, something for some neat games, playing and painting with my 6 year old, and simple/convenient IM and mail access when i’m just vegging at home and don’t always want to pull my laptop on my lap to check something quick.

   The keyboard is actually far easier and better to use than I had expected, and much faster to type on than I hoped. Not as nice, obviously, as a full screen one, but works surprisingly well.

   Screen is a delight – even hours of reading later it’s still comfortable, bright, but it gets fingerprints easily despite some “non fingerprint coating” they tried to use to minimize it. Still looks awful after a while at an angle when you look at it askew. But not at all noticeable while staring at it straight and using it.

   Screen brightness is good, but it doesn’t go down as far as I would’ve liked for ebook reading, but then I found iBook has a separate brightness control that lets me dim it to nearly nothing for use in the dark. Outstanding.

   So then I started throwing some music and photos on it, and that’s when I realized I can easily use this to show my grandmother pictures of her great grandson, since she’s in her upper 80′s and refuses to have a computer, so we can’t email her or send her links or anything. So I started playing with music and photos, and this thing became such a cool toy at that point. I had to run back to the store and return it so I could buy the larger 32GB model since I knew by this time I was keeping it. Fortunately I have a 45 day return period with no restocking fees at this place, so the upgrade was painless and free of cost.

   That’s when I found out that itunes was automatically backing up my unit when it synced. So when I plugged the new one in, the first thing it said was “restore?” So i tried it. It restored all my settings, including mail, so all I had to do was reenter passwords the first time, and I was back up and running after it resynced my apps again. Those stayed in Itunes so I didn’t have to redownload everything.

   Playing with pictures is pretty fun and very smooth, and the speaker on this thing is surprisingly full of bass. There’s even an equalizer for tweaking the sound output to your liking. And the music keeps playing after you close the app so you can have the tunes playing while doing other things (but it will stop when you hit something else that takes over multimedia like a video or some other sound thing from an email of course).

   I grabbed the apple book-like cover and the dock, but you can’t charge it in the dock while that cover is on.

   So I went from the initial “What a useless piece of junk” detractor to the “I wouldn’t live without it” supporter.

   I gave them all sorts of grief for using the term “magical” to describe it, but I have to say, that it actually felt nearly magical that first hour doing things… All my experience with the tablet PC and I wasn’t ready to experience what this interface was like.

   And with this, i may finally be able to get my grandma to have something to keep at her condo so we can email her pictures and such… This would make it a lot easier for her than trying to get her to use a full computer…

   So for a first revision, it’s a grand slam out of the park hit. Granted, it’s just a big ipod touch or iphone or whatever, but for someone who never used either of those, and wanted something with a useful form factor, this is a BIG hit.
3. H. Grove says:

   April 27, 2010 at 12:00 am

   First off: no, it isn’t a portable computer replacement. If you expect it to be, you’ll only be disappointed. Nor is it just an oversized PDA despite claims to the contrary. Instead, it’s a robust adjunct to your main computer. It allows me to take most of my web browsing, game playing, email reading, etc. away from my desk. In large part, whether the iPad suits your needs will depend on whether you can find apps for it that suit your needs. So far there’s a wide array of apps, so I haven’t found this to be much of a problem–but again, it’ll depend on your needs.

   It’s true that there are some things you just can’t do on an iPad, like view Flash content on websites. I do find this occasionally annoying, but honestly, I just hope it convinces more websites to stop using so much Flash content. I’ve always found that it bogs down my machine and causes more problems than it fixes.

   In contrast, I’ve found that the apps on my iPad load and run super-fast. They’re streamlined to have a small footprint, and it shows. They load so fast that load screen tips in games often flash past before I can read them. They also take up a surprisingly small amount of memory; I’m amazed at how slowly I’m using up my 16G!

   The on-screen keyboard is actually pretty good, and suits normal finger size much better than that on the tinier iPhone screen, but it still isn’t meant for extended typing. I’m also addicted to the touch-screen interface. It feels so natural that I find myself trying to use my laptop as though it had one.

   Since I do a lot of reading and reviewing, and I absolutely hate the other e-readers I’ve played with (the screen flash when turning pages would drive me batty before I finished a single book), the iPad’s value as an e-reader was important to me. In this, it truly shines. You can download the Barnes & Noble reader and the Kindle reader for free. GoodReader makes a fantastic pdf reader (just import pdfs from the app tab when synching with your computer). iBooks, however, blew me away. As a book geek, I really like the experience of reading a book rather than a computer file. And iBooks looks the most like a book.

   I’m truly amazed by the screen quality, the speed of everything, the variety of apps available, and the utility of the iPad as an e-reader. I can use it near-constantly for heavy-use things like gameplay and the charge lasts me a good 24 hours.
4. W. Brown says:

   April 27, 2010 at 12:00 am

   With a shortage of IPADs on the market at the moment we were grateful to find a vendor who would ship one on a rush basis.

   Can’t say anything about the IPAD itself yet but at least we got it in time for our presentation. We would buy from Venture Bridge again.
5. WeatherEssentials says:

   April 26, 2010 at 12:00 am

   I bought an Asus Netbook that I tried for 2 days. In my opinion, netbooks are worthless gimmicks. The iPad is hands down the best portable computing device ever. It is fast, easy to use, good looking, and the battery seems to last forever.