My "had an iPad for 8 days" review of apps that are must haves ...

Yeah, I know ... somebody is late to the party ... also, seriously, 8 days?

It surprises people that as a versed IT consultant, geek, academic and self-confessed gadget junky that I didn’t buy the first or even second generation iPad.

The initial release just didn't do it for me ... basically, it was an iPhone in a larger format and without the phone function. The second gen version, once again, failed to add any real argument for buying it. In fact, Android tablets have been making a far better argument for the tablet over the notebook.

That said, a friend gave me his iPad 2 to use for just over a week. I am now about to purchase one.

Let's take a step back.

It started because I decided that against every fibre of my well nurtured and refined bibliophilia, I would invest in a handful of electronic books. I would never consider this for anything that was for the purposes of enjoyable and relaxed reading, but three volumes that I would almost exclusively utilise as reference materials were a good start.

The initial issues in regards to portability and the are-you-fracking-kidding-me software licensing and DRM restrictions aside, the inability to utilise and transport the files via my mobile (Android based) was getting too much, which is why Peter stepped in and offered me the iPad and the small army of applications that have grown around the concept of eBook reading and interaction.

Some of the frustrations are still with the aforementioned stupidity around trying to lock down the use to a point of the ludicrous (e.g. Cengage claiming that the ability to annotate digital editions makes derivative works possible, and is thus an infringement of their copyright) and I am still wary of that. There are also some things with the iPad itself that makes no sense to me - like the keyboard. Seriously? No cursor keys? What's with that? Why can't we replace the keyboard app? Most of the other things I could deal with ... but that keyboard was really starting to shit me.

Anyway ....

8 days was enough time to play with the device in full anger. I used it as my primary device throughout that time - and it really did become something that I could foresee filling the gap between my laptop and my phone. Further, I could see it actually taking over certain areas that I traditionally delegated to the laptop, such as researching papers, dissertations and other such materials.

So in 8 day a few apps did become part of my "I know I won't be living without" list ... this is them, and why.

First of all, the must have cloud apps:

• Evernote; Note taking and synchronisation manager.
• Dropbox; Cloud storage
• SugarSync; Cloud storage
• xmarks; bookmark synchronisation
• The google suite; Search, eMail, Calendar, docs, etc

... all are available under the iPad and all are must haves across any device. Period.

Flipboard – Pull in your Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, News and Instagram feeds and turn them into a beautiful Magazine-style format to feed your mind and your eyes. It's so brilliantly simple, it makes you wonder why no one thought of it earlier.

Goodreader - It turns out to be a really super flexible and robust PDF reader with rome really nice and advanced reading, annotating, markup and highlighting capabilities. The file manager, text editor, audio/video player, Safari-like viewer for Office documents were useful - but ugly as sin. However, it syncs with Google Docs, MobileMe, Dropbox and can browse the local network and my QNAP NAS store meant that it had a lot of value. An alternative I have been recommended is ReaddleDocs for iPad which is basically the same thing - but prettier. So, I have sent an email to both developers. Who's going to support Adobe Digital Edition eBooks first?

As for plain old useful eBook reader? BlueFire fit the bill nicely by organizing eBooks from libraries, independent bookstores and retailers into a single reading environment. It supports all current eBook standards (including the headache inducing ADE) and it was simple, efficient and I must say the support is outstanding with an enquiry regarding bookmark synchronisation and exporting answered in 12 hours with a "we are working on synchronisation for the next releae". Another simple reader was Overdrive Media Console, which also offered a multimedia capability and access to various eBook sources.

As I said, there is plenty of eReading apps. The only problem is where can I get the best price for a book? I couldn't figure out if there was a way to add the Google Books, Kobo, eBooks.com or bookdepository stores into most of the apps ... Maybe I'll send them all feature requests ...

WolframAlpha - When you need stuff that is comptational in nature, then Google is no longer the engine to turn to. For scientific data, mathematical equations, diagrams and more it has to be the Wolfram.

PubGet - One of the things I was evaluating was the ability to do research. Pubget delivers full text journal articles and allows you to read them as PDFs from collections such as PubMed, ArXiv, JSTOR, IEEE and more.

The Elements - If you think you've seen the periodic table, think again. The Elements: A Visual Exploration lets you experience the building blocks of our universe in a way you've never seen before. (Check out the video).

So ... my next taks are to see about matching the Android apps I have to the iOS ... and to not get myself trapped in a never ending draw something match off or have the night slip away as I battle titans in Infinity Blade.

Meanwhile - if you have any "must have apps" let me know.