iPad 2 with Verizon 3G for a Week

Last week I took my family to Florida for a trip near Rosemary Beach. We enjoyed the new Panama City airport and a quick 37 minute flight from Atlanta (yes, driving is only slightly longer counting airport interaction but our two little kids don’t like long car trips). Our beach house was supposed to include Internet access, but alas there was none. Thankfully, I had a new iPad 2 with Verizon 3G.

Here are my thoughts on using the iPad 2 with Verizon 3G  for a week as my primary computing device:

• The Verizon 3G bandwidth was much faster and more reliable than my iPhone 4 AT&T 3G bandwidth (at Santa Rosa Beach, FL) — Verizon 3G was surprisingly usable for most activities.
• Writing these blog posts each night took longer than normal, but by the end of the week I didn’t think anything of it. I used the WordPress iPad app, had to code the HTML for the bullet points by hand, and didn’t put in many hyperlinks.
• Web apps I use on a regular basis worked great (there were a few limitations like with Google Spreadsheets but nothing that slowed me down).
• Flipboard became my primary means of using Google Reader and Twitter
• Angry Birds Rio proved to be tons of fun and had nice UX enhancements over the original, but I would have liked to see a new type of bird or two introduced.
• My total bandwidth was only 465MB, which is much lower than I expected and well within my 1GB/month plan.

Will my iPad 2 replace my MacBook Air 13″? No. Is is a viable device on its own in lieu of a laptop if necessary. Absolutely. It was a great week and the iPad 2 did its job nicely.

What else? What are your thoughts on the iPad?