Michael Becker writes about journalism, new media and digital culture in general.

I posted here a while back about receiv­ing my new iPad, but then I waited almost three-quarters of a month before post­ing again. I’m sure you were all left in breath­less antic­i­pa­tion, wait­ing for my opin­ion of the device.

I’ll get to that in a moment.

First, I thought I’d explain the long absence. Long ago in this blog­ging game, I learned that unex­pected and unin­tended hia­tuses hap­pen. It’s the nature of blog­ging, espe­cially when you’re not paid to write for the blog. Actually, I take that back. If I was a guest poster on some­one else’s blog, I’d feel more oblig­ated to make reg­u­lar post­ings, but since this is my own blog, I let it slide from time to time.

As I said, the inevitabil­ity of hia­tuses is some­thing I learned about long ago. I also learned that’s it’s almost point­less to apol­o­gize for them. It’s my blog, after all.

Still, I thought this hia­tus might be worth explain­ing. You see, I started a blog for my job. I’m a reg­u­lar blog­ger for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle now. You can find what I’m doing over at Becker’s Online Journal.

I try to stick to the topic of dig­i­talia and all things tech related on that new blog, but I built into the descrip­tion a lit­tle lee­way to allow myself to post the odd and quirky things that befit my online nature.

So please, take some time to read over at that site too.

On with the iPad already

In a word, the iPad is awe­some, but you already knew that from count­less other reviews out there. It’s almost uni­ver­sally loved, and the story is no dif­fer­ent at my house, where we have not one, but two of the devices. (There was sim­ply no way I could buy just one. One spouse would have become mur­der­ously jeal­ous of the other.)

Why do I love the iPad? It has a screen-tilt-rotation lock switch. No kid­ding. My biggest and loud­est pet peeve about the iPod Touch was the inabil­ity to read most Web pages and use most apps while lay­ing on my side in bed. Now, I can recline any way I want and lock the iPad’s screen in the desired orientation.

OK, there are some work-related ben­e­fits too. The abil­ity to use Dropbox, Evernote and all those other Web ser­vices on the device is extra­or­di­nar­ily use­ful and saves me from hav­ing to lug my MacBook Pro around to do most every­day com­put­ing tasks. One down­side to the device is that it’s a bit heavy and awk­ward to hold, so I’m always afraid I’m going to drop it when I’m hold­ing it up in a chair or in bed.

The apps, oh, my, god, the apps. I have spent more money on apps since buy­ing the thing than I prob­a­bly did in all the years I owned my iPod Touches com­bined. Still, it’s a small price to pay for the con­ve­nience of mobile computing.

Of spe­cial note, GoodReader. I’ll let you read about the app your­self to see why.

Upsides:

• Tremendous bat­tery life
• Big ol’ screen
• Good enough suite of apps to get most work done
• Gets peo­ple talk­ing to you in restaurants
• Has a built in micro­phone! (Hello Google voice search! Hello record­ing inter­views with­out lug­ging a sep­a­rate voice recorder.)

Downsides:

• It’s hard for me to type on. I wouldn’t want to write more than an e-mail or a few notes.
• A bit awk­ward to hold when read­ing while lying down.
• It’s hard to see cur­sor place­ment when you’re mov­ing the thing around. My fin­ger is always in the way.
• No Flash.
• No cam­era.

If you’ve got an iPad at home and dis­agree with me, do so in the com­ments. If you’ve got ques­tions, put ‘em in the com­ments. I may even respond to you using the WordPress app on iPad. You never know with me.