Today is a day of firsts. For starters it’s my first day back at work since injuring my leg. I’ve attempted it without crutches and thought I had quite a pace on until I got into the building and realised that I wasn’t going to get very far very fast. I’m sure as the week goes on I’ll get my speed up. Somehow I have to conquer London with luggage and a dodgy leg at the weekend. If you hear people howling with laughter in Kings Cross on Friday evening, that will be me arriving!

It is also the first chance I’ve had to play on an iPad. It definitely does elicit a “Oooh” on seeing it. It’s prettier and smaller than I thought it would be. I’ve already checked out the video capability by watching the Sex and the City 2 trailer (again – well it’s important that it’s something I can do a like for like comparison on my iPhone and Macbook) and now I’m checking out the typing capability with this blog. It’s actually quite nice to type on, I’m getting a fair pace up and feel like I’ve got to grips with the keyboard in a couple of paragraphs even though I have to remember to change for different punctuation. The leap from iPhone to iPad is minimal, but landscape the keyboard is very acceptable for writing.

It is a thing of beauty… I can imagine sitting on a train typing away or taking a break to watch a movie. The most appealing thing is the size is small enough to fit in most of my handbags. If I travelled as much as I used to then I would almost certainly get one of these to save on luggage when a laptop wasn’t necessary. Especially now Im convinced I could type on it without trouble.

Having said that I wouldn’t necessarily use it as an eBook reader. With the iPad you are reading a screen, unlike the Sony Reader where the experience isn’t nearly as harsh on your eyes (as someone who is due their first pair of glasses probably due to too much screen time that’s a huge drawback). The other reason is that I don’t believe the days of the book are over, I’m quite sentimental about holding a real book in my hand to read. And these days even the humble paperback is multifunctional. Place it under your iPad and it makes it just the right height of the surface to be able to type comfortably! (although I’m currently using an empty Graze* box, they are multifunctional too!)

The only major downside is publishing this blog. In an hour of playing about on this thing I have learned many things, such as how to save an image from the web or email to your iPad and realised just how fast you can switch between apps. But to work between Evernote, WordPress and Safari is too fiddly for my liking and I’ve ended up heading back to my work PC to finish up the job. It’s probably a good job there is a downside as it stops me from heading straight to the Newcastle Apple Store after work (actually my leg would also do a pretty good job of slowing me down!)

Compared to the iPad my iPhone suddenly seems tiny too! And that’s the third first of the day. Hopefully sometime soon after 6pm (BST) Steve Jobs will announce the new iPhone HD/4G and that i am very excited about. Never before have I been at the moment of a major Apple release able to justify indulging in the newness. For the first time i have a genuine excuse of being at the point of upgrade on my contract. Much as I may have to have this iPad prized from my hands in an hour or so, I will let it go and for now resist rushing out and buying one for myself. But once the new iPhone is on pre-order wild horses won’t be able to stop me…

*try Graze for free (includes free iPad stand… kind of!) using the code RDFJPGB at http://www.graze.com/