I'm still having fun with my iPad, but it's a frustrating learning curve. Understand my background, I've been on computers since I was 10, when my Hewlett-Packard engineer started me on BASIC programming. I've used computers when they had a little built-in black and green screen, Macs back when they were known as a Macintosh, every version of Windows since 3.11, and most recently my iMac. The iPad is yet again different from all of the above.

First, you don't have access to your filesystem (e.g., directories, folders, or for mac users Finder). You can't just save a file, then drag and drop it over to your desktop to use it. You have to carefully choose which app you're going to create in, and make sure that app will allow you to do with your creation what you desire. Most apps will save your file to a standard format such as PDF and let you email your file, some upload to Twitter or Facebook, but you are restricted by the app in what you can do with your file. Want to name your file? Not an option. Files are supposed to be mysteriously saved without you ever having to know anything about them such as what they're called or where they are located.

You may have heard that you can "sync" your files with iTunes. True, but it's not what I expected. In general, if you're going to transfer a file between a desktop and the iPad, you have to use iTunes. This means 1) your file must be in a format that iTunes recognizes, and 2) it is only placed where iTunes can access it. The upcoming release of iOS4 for the iPad in November may (?) change this, but for now, syncing means you can transfer iTunes files, and that's it.

Furthermore, syncing does behave the way I expected. When I plug in my iPad to my iMac, up pops iTunes, prompting the syncing. I go through and select what I want to sync, click "sync," and it appears to. However, anything that was not selected to sync, well, it doesn't ignore those items (for instance, books, music, videos, tv shows, etc.). If it's not selected when syncing, it's not interpreted as "ignore those items," but rather as, "I don't want those items on my iPad any more so delete them all."  What??? No, by not selecting to sync my iBooks, I meant they were fine as they were so don't waste your time or mine syncing them. Isn't that logical? Nope, iTunes thinks it means I don't want them at all, so they're gone. Thankfully the backup copy is still on my iMac, so I can waste my time at a later date putting them all back on my iPad. But in the meantime, they are no longer on my iPad.