News on Apple iPad
December 8, 2010
This article aims to inform you regarding the first news app for Apple iPad and it then compares mobile phone operators contracts and download limits. We are beginning to see some very competitive iPad reductions and contract deals.
The Apple iPad is a touchscreen tablet computer that revolutionises the way you access the internet. The iPad is offering a new way of delivering your news. For example, The Sunday Times is the first newspaper to introduce a news app, a digital version, that allows readers to view the entire printed edition of their paper with video, graphics and superb HD-quality picture slideshows without getting any print on your hands! The iPad can deliver fantastic graphics and the app is free to view. However, to download issues of the Sunday Times you will have to pay £1.79 a week via your iTunes account. However, if you subscribe to the Sunday Times website, it will cost £1 a week under their current 30-day introductory offer. If you already subscribe to the printed edition you will be able to download the iPad edition free. Why not watch a video of the Sunday Times app in action at thesundaytimes.co.uk/ipad. It only takes seconds to download each news section -to be read at your leisure- read in landescape mode and by rotating the iPad 90 degrees will give you plain text view of articles, with pinch and zoom functions enabling you to select type size.
IPad and the Internet
Wifi home users can use their iPad to connect online without any extra charge. There are wifi ‘hot spots’ in coffee shops and airports which you pay to use. The iPad can also connect online using the mobile 3G network, run by mobile phone operators, on a PAYG basis or a rolling monthly plan. Orange offers such a rolling plan for £15 a month for 3G data and unlimited access to BT Openzone wifi hotspots. Operators are already enticing customers to sign up for longer contracts by subsidising the initial cost of the iPad.
Contracts and download limits
3 have introduced a two year plan that costs £25 a month and includes 15GB of downloaded data. The 16GB iPad costs £199; the 32GB £249 and the 64GB £349. If you exceed your data limit 3 will charge you 10p per MB of data -an expensive excess when compared to Orange and T-Mobile. However, 3 offers the ‘Mifi’ option which looks a great deal – a portable wifi hotspot that connects to the internet using a 3G network offering wifi only owners of iPad more flexibility. The Mifi offers 5GB of data downloads for £15 a month plus an initial cost of £39.99 for the portable wifi modem.
Orange & T-Mobile are both owned by Everything Everywhere and offer a two year plan costing £25 (existing customers) or £27 a month (new customers) with a rather meagre 1GB of downloads monthly at anytime and a further 1GB between midnight and 4pm. Not such a generous deal as 3. They will however only charge you 5p per MB for exceeding these limits. If you think you will be an avid data user of your iPad when you are out and about 3 sounds the better choice.
The best option overall?
Consumer Choices in the Sunday Times Newspaper suggest that it is cheaper to buy a 16GB 3G iPad for around £529 and a SIM only deal from O2 for £10 a month – saving around £78 over the 2-year contracts. For more information and updates:
- visit the three website
- visit the T-mobile website
- Visit the Orange website
- Visit the o2 website
- Visit the iPad page on the Tesco website
- Visit the iPad page on the Amazon website
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