Is there? I thought the advertised price on the US Apple website is what you will pay. Not as attractive a saving if thats the case.

Unfortunately not. When you input your home Zip code into the site, it calculates the sales tax. There are a few states which do not have a sales tax such as Delaware.

Its because sales tax varies from state to state, and is never included in US list prices like VAT is in the UK.

Its still probably going to be cheaper, just not quite as cheap by the time you add sales tax. $550 still work out at about £350 instead of £500.

Thanks for the advice lads, he is going to Philly so it adds about $30 to a 32GB Ipad, i might send him over with a couple of Ipad covers and he can just stick them on and hope he gets through alright. Still a saving of £80 on the 32gb Ipad.

So I was playing with one in a shop shortly and 2 things surprised me. One, how hot it was, surely over 40 °C. It was running on an adapter, but still, it was hot all over. The other thing, I checked the preinstalled photos to look how this miraculous retina display handles it, I pinched to zoom a bit and there it was, jpeg artifacts after a bit of zooming. So either they should get better pictures with more pixels to showcase the device or there's something wrong with how jpegs are displayed.

I bought a 64gb iPad 2 from the states last year, saved about £175
I took a case with me and upped some photos to the cload to download once set up
I then posted the box back to my uk address for about $7
Happy days

Do they get you to switch it on or anything at customs or give it any sort of scrutiny?

I have a query regarding the iPad 2 actually.
In a shop photo quality = amazing
Come home with ipad, find that quality = shit :S

I noticed the same. iTunes/iPhoto (not sure what controls it) doesn't send to the iPad in full resolution (which probably makes sense, since otherwise people would run out of room very quickly), however it'd be great to be able to customise how much compression it does.

Customise? On an iPad? Jobs will be turning in his grave ......

A tip to get proper battery life is to eave it charging an hour after it says it shows 100%.

It appears that Apple subtracts nearly an hour from the actual charge time.

I just downloaded a few free apps and changed the wallpaper and had it in my hand luggage, even used it on the way back to watch a few episodes of House that I downloaded onto it from iTunes

Didn't notice the heat when I tried it at weekend, I was more interested by the screen - the sample pictures really weren't very high resolution. They could have done with some samples taken off a DSLR to demonstrate the possibly awesome screen.

But as it was, I just felt a bit "thats what all the fuss is about, really?". Yes, it is nice, but the colours just didn't seem to pop in the way I was expecting.

I would not worry about colours not popping, they usually do that when they are over-saturated or artificially modified. They like to do that in ads or when somebody used 'film effect' on a video. Then it all looks more colourful and vibrant and unrealistic and annoying after a while.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57...math-is-wrong/

"says the maths is wrong"
" Soneira said it takes an additional 2 hours and 10 minutes after the battery reports 100 percent for the recharging cycle to "fully" terminate."

Good maths to me if it subtracts 2 hours ten minutes from the charge time. Anyone remember those 'bigger bars'?
The white lies are always amusing.

That's how you make it charge faster. Pure magic. Or incompetence.

Forget what I said about that battery.
It seems that if you leave it plugged in the battery lifespan reduces. Its why battery charge cut-off is normally always a bit below 100%

http://www.pcworld.com/article/25254...udy_warns.html

Different by design?

ipad battery nonsense

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/3200...-issue-100.htm

"Soneira refuted this and called it incorrect in a Zdnet media report and explained, "Damaging the longevity of the battery is then exactly what the new iPad's internal battery charging hardware and software are doing since it is their responsibility to properly control and manage the battery recharging process. It is pretty obvious that if the new iPad knows that it is fully charged then it should automatically stop the charging. So according to Apple, the new iPad is configured to damage the longevity of its own battery if it is not manually disconnected from the AC charger when the 100 percent indicator appears. Anyone that recharges their iPad unattended, especially overnight, will be doing this."

Let it discharge below 40% and longevity takes a hit.
Leave it plugged in and longevity takes a hit.

The best user outcome is that it is not actually charged and takes another 2 hours past 100% to be 100% charged so your battery lifespan is not actually downgraded

So how can this this be nonsense?

Mainly because 2+2 doesn't equal 5.

I've highlighted in bold the part that isn't clear. It sounds good, but the evidence seems scant.

Nothing to get charged up about

Apple want to "eat one's cake and have it too ".

Obviously , by Apple stating 'charging the battery above capacity will damage it' they are purposely confusing the issue by answering ambiguously.
Either they are being false about the charging time or else the battery is being damaged using it with the charger plugged in.

The problem with Apple is that any answer is meticulously calculated to be the best for their marketing purposes. This most usually being a non answer allowing loads of wriggle room.

The battery doesn't charge above capacity though. That's the whole point. There is no issue here. The problem seems to be that you haven't read the links above explaining this.

So another shop, they actually had a wide choice of tablets, Apple, Asus, Samsung, and one more brand which I forgot. They had iPad 2 and iPad 3 next to each other, both doing nothing, iPad 2 was relatively cold, iPad 3 was very hot again

Bought an Ipad 3 for my dad since he's been using an iphone for a while and wanted a bigger screen to watch streaming videos etc on. Within 5 minutes of just browsing it was running pretty hot. He's not that wowed by the screen either. Sure looks great when you zoom in to text but in normal viewing distance and without zooming in, it looks as good as any other high ends tablet with a decent screen.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no fan of Apple, far from it, but the new ipad really is a total con job. With the misleading sales line of being 4g ready, when it will only work in the US, to the hype about the screen, charging issues, over heating etc etc, it's a very flawed device.

The new ipad is going right back to pc world. May go for an Ipad 2 and save a hundred quid, or grab an Advent Vega for far less, stick a custom ICS rom on it (beta 1 vegaICS is pretty slick and awesome) Opera mobile and opera mini next are amazing on it, very smooth, handles flash and html5 really well. Wealth of apps in the android market/google play.

There are some great alternatives that people should give a try which may well cater for their needs and without breaking the bank too.

The Apple gravy train is running out of track. Their products sell bucket loads but seem to come with so many faults and they have kinda plateaued and are not really progressed, from the software side to the hardware as well. they keep coming up with snazzy names for things that are already done on other devices, which seem to jump out at people and tricking them in to thinking that its new stuff, but not really.

Pretty bored the way Apple do things. They were fresh when it came to the ipod and iphone and the first ipad, they set the standard, now they just dont bother. Why should they? They $500+ share price afterall.

I might be their biggest sceptic but its actually reasonable value in some ways, especially jailbroken post warranty.

Its just horrendous that their infamous ecosystem is primarily designed to enhance sales, not help the user.
iPad 2 is more portable and maybe better value if you can live with the same restrictions.


Without a keyboard tablets may well become seen as 'quick and dirty' devices. Time will tell.