Apple iPad - Is it the End of the Road For eReaders?

Apple has finally revealed their version of eReaders. The Apple iPad is not as simple as most of the electronic readers on the market. In fact it is more of a mini tablet computer than anything else. There has been a lot of speculation about Apple's release, along with a great deal of hype. For months we have been unable to say the iPad even existed, until January 28, 2010 when it was revealed.

At the moment the iPad is not on sale. It has just been unmasked and will not be for sale until April. It cannot even be used by the general public as the device has yet to enter stores in a sample capacity. The question is the iPad the end of the road for eReaders may seem a bit premature, but we have to examine what we already know.

What we know is that the iPad looks like a very large version of the iPod Touch. It has an aluminum back, half inch thick design, and 10 inch screen. The screen is surrounded by a black border. It has the standard iPod/ iPhone connector with a single home button at the bottom. Apple is introducing the iPad with two levels of memory. There are the 16 gigs, and 64 gigs memory. The 64 gigs of memory offer Wi-Fi and 3G cellular. AT&T will provide the 3G connection for $15 a month per 250MB or $30 for unlimited data transfer. There is no contract with AT&T for this. You just have to cancel the service whenever you wish.

The Apple iPad is $499 for the 16 gigs version and $830 for the 64 gigs version. With the iPad consumers will be able to surf the net, read emails, send emails, and read eBooks. You could also use Skype via the iPad for cell phone calls, though that might look a little strange.

As an electronic reader, which is the more important factor here, the iPad certainly delivers. It has a good sized screen like the Kindle. It also offers color and does not need external illumination. Unfortunately, the price of eBooks at $10 each for bestsellers is not possible, but you still have quite a few inexpensive eBooks to download. Battery life is 10 hours unless you do more than read books with the eReader software provided on the iPad.

The one thing you must consider regarding the Apple iPad as an eReader and good investment is the memory. Most eReaders currently work with 16 to 64 gigs of memory. The iPad offers the same with more options, so can the memory really support eBooks? If you can download only 3500 eBooks on Kindle with 64 gigs it doesn't seem the multi-use of iPad offers enough memory for all the tasks you would want it to fulfill, plus the cost is quite high. So it's not yet the end of eReaders.