We finally did it – we got an Apple iPad. Our excuse was a mutual gift for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and anniversary. Mostly we really wanted one.

We looked at the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy and others, but none of them had as many features or apps, and they couldn’t match the ease of iPad’s touch screen and finger scrolling. So, we decided on the iPad 2 and it was all we expected and more.

On our first power up, the iPad found our secure home wireless network and asked for our password and other information needed to register itself with Apple. We were off to a good start.

Then the fun part. We loaded some photos into the iPad to show friends and family on the large (9.75"), bright display. We tapped the folder we wanted, and up popped one of our photos; by just sliding our finger across the screen, we scrolled from one photo to another. The iPad changes automatically from horizontal to vertical view, has easy touch zoom in and out, shows photos in brilliant color and does videos too. Since the photos already in our computer had been sorted into event folders (Ann’s 14th birthday, Christmas 2010, etc.) we could use the Apple iTunes program, available for MAC or PC, to easily "sync" them into the iPad and maintain the same folder structure. We also bought the camera connection kit that connects any digital camera directly to the iPad for copying photos we just took. Included with the kit is an SD card reader that lets us copy pictures from friends’ SD cards or from ours into the iPad for instant viewing.

We also set up our family calendar and contact list to use on our iPad. We already have a calendar on our Mac, full of appointments, one-time and recurring events, holidays and more, so we just used iTunes to sync our Mac calendar and contact list into the iPad. Any changes we make on the iPad can be synced to the Mac and vice versa. It’s great to have our calendar, phone numbers and email addresses with us on the go.

Next we explored the world of apps (application programs). By tapping the Apple app store icon, we can choose from 425,000 apps that range from free daily downloads of USA Today to local grocery store specials to location- specific annotated views of tonight’s sky to games and an amazing selection of useful, unusual or just plain fun ways to use an iPad. Major cool.

The iPad 2 comes in two versions: WiFi only and WiFi +3G (4G available on some carriers). The WiFi version requires an available WiFi "hot spot," including your home wireless network, for access to the Internet; the 3G (4G) version uses cell phone data networks and can be used anywhere for Internet access. Now we have Internet access for browsing the Web and sending and receiving email–all by just tapping and scrolling away.

We’re just getting started. Stay tuned for more life with an iPad.