Gadgetory

hey i'm donald bell for cnet.com today I'm giving a first look at the Apple iPad you no doubt heard a lot of hype about Apple's new have a computer there's a little under 8 by 10 and about 1/2 an inch thick giving it a natural magazine like feel weighs 1.5 pounds which is light by laptop standards but a little hefty compared to something like the Amazon Kindle there are two main models one that connects to the web over Wi-Fi and one that uses a combo of Wi-Fi and 3G wireless from AT&T the Wi-Fi models come in three capacities starting a $4.99 for 16 gigabytes $5.99 for 32 gigabytes and $6.99 for 64 gigs the 3G equipped models come in the same three capacities but sell for $130 more on top of the pay-as-you-go data plan you need from AT&T to get the 3G working for most people the Wi-Fi model is gonna be the one to go with both because it's cheaper and because this is really a device that seems to be geared for the living room the whole thing is based around the iPhone OS which is scaled much bigger to fill the nine point seven inch screen there's a lot of familiar features here such as email web photos maps music videos and YouTube along with the links to the integrated iTunes Store and App Store when you launch any of these apps however the user interface is slightly different than what we've seen from the iPhone mostly because there's more room to play with the email app shows off your inbox alongside emails while on the landscape view and the Photos app behaves much more like Apple's own iPhoto software with these stacks of photos grouped by events and apps such as maps in the Safari web browser get much closer to a laptop experience on this larger screen Apple beefed up the processor to using their own 1 gigahertz a4 chip which makes the whole thing very responsive which is something you notice in particular on apps that don't depend on the web like photos there's also an optional download from Apple called iBooks that gives the iPad a drool-worthy e-book reader thankfully the faster processor doesn't come at the expense of battery life Apple promises 10 hours of active use including web and video and up to a month of standby time when you need to charge it you can connect it to your computer or use the included USB wall charger Apple also sells this basic $30 dock which has the advantage of transforming the iPad into a pretty cool photoframe while it charges speaking of docks Apple has another one for $70 with a keyboard attached which can really help with hardcore emailing or entering text into Apple's optional spreadsheet documents and presentation apps which sell for $9.99 each they're useful but like the iPhone the real draw of the iPad in the long run will be apps made by third parties you've got all sorts of games with stunning graphics video streaming apps like Netflix a comic book app from Marvel and tons of exciting apps that are trickling out day by day all of that really gets down to the main appeal of the device there's no single thing that it does that can't be done with a thousand dollar laptop and in some ways done better but given its size and its price and its design like most Apple products puts even most expensive competitors to shame so there you go that's my take on the Apple iPad you can find more of our continuing iPad coverage at cnn.com