Yes indeed, I caved and became an iPad owner and fan.  We got some for the office to do presentations and they are honestly really handy to have on hand and I’m sure you’re thinking – well screw it – I’ll just use a lap top.  Not after you use one.  Laptops are handy but the experience of just one tablet in your hand is really nice and while there are tons of new tablets coming out – this had a solid interface design, great selection of free and paid apps and over all is quick and fun to use.  Since I have been using it for a week or 2 now I have some favorite apps that you should get or actually go out and get an iPad just to get these apps!

1) Dropbox - The best way to get files on the iPad and really anywhere else.  If you have been taking things to work on a thumb drive, quit it.  Get a free Dropbox account, install it at home, on your iPad, iPhone, Android phone and at work and your files will be synced every where you go.  It works by just placing a folder on your desktop or wherever and you put files in it, and that’s it.  www.dropbox.com

2) iBrainstorm – This is great for creating ideas and sharing thoughts.  You can actually share your brainstorms with other people by listening for other iPads in the area or sending what you created by email.
3) Adobe Ideas - A mini Photoshop for the iPad – Drawing tools, a history, and even layers if you want to pay for them.  Honestly if there isn’t another one – I would be hard pressed to say this isn’t the best drawing app for iPad and its totally free.  You can even pull in pictures as well and add them to the canvas and then draw on top of them.  Since I do web design, I could see a comp on the go, pull it in and put notes on it and send it back.  Awesome.

4) Dictionary.com - A perfect tool for any word nerd.  I have the word-a-day widget on my Android phone but if you love words, this is perfect.  Or lets just say you are using iBooks and you need to reference a word, done.

5) Soundrop - Just fun.  All I can say is I couldn’t tollerate this for hours but for a short period of time its really entertaining and even more so if you try to create anything that makes any musical sense to it.  You essentially get a free flow of little balls that drop from a hole at the top of your screen and you draw lines for them to bounce off of.  They can bounce to other lines or just off the page.  I’m going to try making a maze of a billion lines and see if I can get it to crash.  I haven’t been successful yet.

6) Truphone - The best chat/phone client for iPad.  Skype isn’t really functional enough in my opinion but you can find it as Skype S.A.R.L. and run the iPhone app.  Truphone gives you:
1) Free Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi calls to Truphone, Skype and GTalk
2) Chat with Facebook, Skype, MSN, GTalk, and AIM friends
3) Send and receive SMS
4) Free voicemail

7) Netflix – If you have the unlimited membership you can stream whatever you want for free on to your iPad.  It’s nice having it on your computer but a dedicated app that will play on your 720p res screen is pretty handy for when you want a quick movie.

Bloomberg - A really nice quick reference of stock info, trends, news and prices.

9) Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD - If you are bored and want to play some piano, this is a great way to do it.  You can learn piano on this app or if you are good you can even play a duet with a friend.  Probably even if your not good you could do that as well.

10) FLUD – You’ll probably notice this one doesn’t have a great rating in the App Store but we happen to know a guy who knows the guy who made it and it really got a bad wrap.  The version before the one that is out now was force closing all the time because it wasn’t compatible wit the new version of iOS.  Everyone started hating on the app, which was reasonable but Apple was holding up the release of the stable version – not cool.  So now that it’s working great – I highly recommend you download it.  If you read lots of blogs or don’t because it takes too much time – you can now enjoy them in an easily digestible format.  Put in your own RSS feeds or just read from their lists of tech blogs, creative, politics and more!

And for the 2 MUST HAVE Apps that aren’t free…

1) Angry Birds – Now I am only suggesting this to you so it take just as many hours of your life away as it has from mine.  The most addictive game on the planet.  I have taken tons of crap for playing this game and then getting called a nerd for it, only to find out the next week or even the next day that they are obsessively playing this game as well.  I don’t know why it’s so fun, I just know I love birds and hate pigs now – except for bacon, who could hate bacon.

2) iELECTRIBE – This isn’t for everyone but if you like this sort of thing you should get it.  The Electribe by KORG is a legendary piece of tube driven electronic synthesis hardware that has been virtualized.  That’s a mouthful but what it really means is they stuffed this awesome piece of music creation equipment into the iPad so that you can create on the go without busting out big pieces of equipment.  You can even save your work or export a wave file.  Very cool!

That’s it – if you have more suggestions post as a comment or Like this page or put it on the Facebook wall!

A worthwhile investment if you are looking for something that does just about everything.  I got the one that was cheaper by $70 and you know what the difference is?  A $70 USB dongle that actually receives the signal from your wireless router allowing you to use the Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube and Pandora features printed on the box.  So this is why I’m posting this one and not the one I got.  I have only used the Netflix so far but it’s bad ass (just add to your queue and it will show up on the screen as available).  I think this is a much better investment than the Boxee Box which is an oddly shaped piece of junk that isn’t even released yet but does mainly the same stuff (minus play Blu-ray), but with the bonus of putting your pictures and other content on that is better suited for a real computer.  Buy this, not that.

GET IT HERE:
Samsung BD-P3600 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player