Thanks to the major marketing boost that the iPad received from parent company Apple, we now have the impression that it is the best device to experience the Web, watch online streaming video, and connect with friends via social networking services.
The opinion is backed with good reason and real results because the iPad is filled to the brim with Internet-savvy features and services. Despite the initial skepticism expressed by most industry pundits when the computing device was unveiled at a press conference in San Francisco, positive reviews by tech experts who had the privilege of testing the first few commercially available iPads—from Walt Mossberg to the guys at Engadget—had to admit that, indeed, Steve Jobs has unleashed a worthy competitor to netbooks.
It is equipped with built-in, high-speed 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, which makes downloading files and streaming videos fast and easy. You can forget about buffering, which takes up so much time that it lengthens a four-minute video into eight minutes of waiting. Although some connections may tend to slow down—particularly when there is heavy gateway traffic or when too many subscribers are using the network—it is not going to affect your iPad browsing experience, thanks to its combination of a beefed-up Safari app (which is Apple's answer to Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer), and the latest Wi-Fi standard.
