The Kindle clearly stands out from its e-reader peers in terms of price and reputation. Buying a Kindle probably seems redundant because I have an iPad. But unlike the iPad which does lots of things well, the Kindle is excellent just for reading text.

The actual device and UI feels a little short of the polish I take for granted from the iPad and the iPhone, but the Kindle gets the important things right for the purpose it was designed for. It has a good high contrast e ink display, light weight and very long battery life.

Since I got the Kindle, I’ve been enjoying using it to read The Count of Monte Cristo each night before going to bed. The Kindle is much easier to hold than a 1200+ page printed book. I can tell you, dropping a Kindle on your face when you doze off is better than the book.

As well as displaying text really, really well, the Kindle has some other tricks. It can display PDFs, play music, read text aloud and browse the web, although not nearly as well as it displays text.

There are things I don’t like too. The selection of Kindle books available for Australians from Amazon isn’t great. I don’t like the position and design of the side navigation buttons. I’ve pressed them accidentally a few times now.

As a whole though, I like the Kindle a lot. I can see myself reading a lot more often.

So far, I’m liking iPad 2. It feels better in my hands – lighter and slimmer than its predecessor. It also feels noticeably faster and more responsive. The quality of the newly added cameras are a little disappointing, but I don’t see anyone wanting to use an iPad as their primary photography device.

The Smart Cover is a neat accessory, although I don’t think it’ll eliminate the need for a case as it doesn’t protect the back of the iPad. Maybe you could get away with it if the iPad was just used around the house. I like how it locks and unlocks the screen when you close and open the cover. The leather seems very flexible and durable, but the smell of it is very strong.

I haven’t tried the digital AV adapter yet. But I’m looking forward to trying a few games on a 52″ TV.

For me the iPad makes the ideal device for the living room – for chilling out in front of the TV, do a quick Google or Wikipedia search about a topic on the 7pm Project, find a song I heard on a new commercial using Shazam or join the Twitter backchannel conversation while watching Masterchef. At the moment, I flip between my MacBook Pro and iPhone for this. And neither feels quite right for it – one’s too big and the other’s too small.

Speed, heat and battery life are three important things I look at when I deciding whether to buy a portable device and the iPad seems to have big green tick for each. All three were covered in Andy Ihnatko’s Twit.tv demo. The interface looks smooth and responsive, he responded to Alex’s question about heat by saying there was no discernable heat change even after watching a movie, and his battery life tests support what Apple’s claim of 10 hours.

Well, like I said before, I’m off the fence. I’m no longer deciding whether to buy an iPad now, I’m deciding whether I should buy one for my parents too. Now I’m just waiting for Apple to decide on Australian pricing.

I’ve got three 1TB and one 640GB hard drive in it now, giving me 2.37TB of protected storage space. If in the future I find myself running low on space, it’s simple to switch those drives for larger ones in the future.

I’m very happy with my Drobo/DroboShare set up. I’d recommend it to anyone needing an easy to set up storage/back up solution and had the money. The ability to stream media to PS3 and iTunes is a bonus.