iPad 2 - Everyone was at awe and full of excitement when the Apple iPad 2 was announced, but how does it really stand up to the competition and is it worth the upgrade? Now that it has been released for six months and I own one, along with the first generation iPad and a HP Touchpad. I feel I am one person that can give a fair review of the item. Examining how the iPad 2 is an improvement over the original on the outside, inside, and how it compares to the Touchpad in terms of hardware and software is a great way to show why the iPad 2 is worth buying. 

When first grasping the iPad 2, you notice it is much thinner than the iPad 1. It is approximately the same thickness as a simple pencil; you may ask how does it not break? Well it is construced of aluminum on the back and gorilla glass on the front. The gorilla glass in the iPad 2 is double the strength of the similar type of glass used in the first generation iPad. The testers at the website Gizmodo.com compared these two pieces of glass with two pieces of wood and bending the glass between them. The iPad 2 glass stretched twice as far before breaking. The glass is not perfect though, it will break it dropped without a case because it is indeed glass. Unlike the iPad 1, the iPad 2 has special tiny magnets built in around the screen that allows Apple's new product the smart cover to be usable. The cover sticks to the iPad 2 and wakes up the iPad when the cover is removed. This interesting feature is a feature not available with the first iPad. The screen size and resolution is the same as the original iPad, with a 9.7" IPS technology screen and a 1024x768 resolution. A new addition to the iPad 2 is the cameras on both the front and the back of the device. The front facing camera, similar to that of the one in the Apple iPhone 4 is mainly used for skype and video conversations. The camera on the back is a low one megapixel camera, and is quite grainy. I cannot imagine anyone having a use for this and I myself have never found a use for it. It still is better than the originals iPad's though, since it does not even have a camera. The iPad 2 can also be bought in the color white, unlike the original. I bought my iPad 2 from Apple.com the night it was available and got it in a few days with free shipping. 

The internals have gone through a drastic change between the two iPads. Apple, along with every other technology giant upgrades their devices to meet the latest technology. Apple has shown this by upgrading from the slower A4 single-core processor in the original iPad to the faster and much smoother dual-core A5 processor found in the iPad 2. The random access memory or RAM has been doubled between the two devices from 256 megabytes to 512 megabytes. The RAM upgrade allows more webpages to be open simultaneously in applications such as skyfire and safari. On the original iPad if you open ten pages at once, the device is quite slow and can even become unresponsive; on the new iPad ten pages is no problem, with no slowdowns. The speakers are the same in both iPad's, although the placement of them is a bit different. The hard drive storage options are the same in both devices, depending on how much you need. Available options are as low as 16GB to as high as 64GB. The video memory has also been upgraded in the iPad 2, allowing games such as Infinity Blade to run quickly and look much better, more realistic even. The figures in Infinity Blade look more closely to real humans than those shown on the first iPad. Overall it is good upgrade to the original in my opinion, since the price of the two is the same starting out. 

Knowing the iPad 2 is a good improvement over the original, how does it compare to similar tablet computers in the market? I own an HP Touchpad which is a similar tablet and it is a close comparison. The Touchpad features the same type of display, sporting a 9.7" IPS technology screen just as the iPad 2. I consider the two being a tie in this category, because there really is not much of a difference. When it comes to overall shape the Touchpad is shorter than the iPad but the same width. I do not see this as being much of a difference either. The iPad 2 is considerably lighter than the touchpad it feels like, this should not matter too many people, the difference is not to major, and with a case the weight equals out. The touchpad has smaller hard drive options than the iPad 2; having only 16GB and 32GB options. I do not know many people that would use the full 64GB of data that can be bought in an iPad 2, but if you need that much than the iPad 2 would be the device to go with. Both my iPad 2 and touchpad have 16GB of data and I do not find myself looking for more space at all. My original iPad has 64GB of data and if I did not put my movies on it, I would have no use for the full 64GB. The camera comparison between the iPad 2 and the touchpad is another tie. While the touchpad only has one, front facing camera, it is of a much higher quality than both of the cameras on the iPad 2. Since the touchpad does not have a camera on the back and iPad 2 does, I give them a tie. The touchpad has a dual-core processor, just as the iPad 2, but it is .2 gigahertz faster. The .2 gigahertz does not seem to make much of a difference, but since the speed is clocked faster, I give this to the touchpad. The battery life on the touchpad is very close to that of both iPad's. I do not notice much faster drainage between the three devices. A notable difference in the two devices is the speaker quality. The iPad 2 has decent speakers but not the best on the market; on the other hand, the touchpad uses higher quality beats audio, which is argued as some of the best on the market in 2011. It shows this, the sound quality on any music is like comparing static to clear, smooth sound between the two devices. When it comes to price, originally they were both tied at $499 for the base price, but now the touchpad has been lowered to an extremely good, low price of $99. If you are on a budget and want a nice tablet, the touchpad is for you. 

When it comes to software, I have to say the iPad 2 dominates this category all around. The touchpad, which runs on WebOS is a system that does not have near the developers or supporters that the iPad 2 and the app store has. The app store has well over 500,000 applications that can be downloaded for free, or for a small fee to the iPad, whereas the touchpad has only a few 1,000. This attracts many more people to the iPad 2 because there is many more applications for anything you can think of in the app store, the selection of apps is very limited if you are buying the touchpad. If you are using a phone as a main internet connection, you will notice trouble when trying to connect the touchpad to the internet; this is because the touchpad does not support ad-hoc networks. This is a downfall for people like me that live on the iPhone internet tethering; the iPad 2 does support these networks and has no trouble connecting. For most people this will not be an issue but it something that should be known and that I was not aware of when I bought the touchpad. When using the touchpad, it is just as fluid as the iPad 2 when it comes to scrolling between pages of applications and searching through the device. WebOS itself is not a bad system to use, and if it had more applications I believe it would be a great system. 
If you are stuck on deciding a tablet computer to buy, ask yourself what you are expecting. If you want just a simple tablet computer, with no cameras, lots of apps and good ability to function, the iPad 1 would be good. Although if you want a nice, newer tablet with a camera you have to decide how much your budget is? The iPad 2 and the touchpad are close in mostly every category besides the selection of apps, is the price difference of $400 worth the app store? I myself believe the iPad 2 is a wonderful device to have and use if your budget can afford it, otherwise I would highly recommend the $99 HP touchpad.