NAS and HD in boxes.

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB.

Eco-friendly cardboard packaging on the DNS-323.

It is even smaller than I expected.

Cables, power brick.

It seems quite nicely made.

Side by side with HD before installation.

Another view.

Rear view.

Front cover just slides off to slide in drive(s)

Assembled and hacked in short order. Got lighthttpd mySQL and PHP running. Just a bit of tweaking and hardening and then I’ll find a place to tuck it away out of sight and save some desk space

Later

Tucked away in the home theatre cabinet with other fan-bearing gadgets.

After I charged up both batteries of the new drill I used it to drill holes in masonry, drive in screws into masonry and then drive some screws into wood for fitting a latch to keep Pip out of the bathroom. First battery still full of energy!

Not enough room on the table for all of them, but every variety in my order is there.

The iPad isn’t a big iPod touch—an iPod touch is a miniature iPad that restricts the full multitouch experience in exchange for offering greater portability. With the iPad, in contrast, you get multitouch the way it was meant to be done.

That’s one of our many take-aways after having submerged ourselves in iPad land since launch. The larger screen doesn’t just offer more space to work with—it opens up a different and more immersive user experience. Because of this different experience, though, the closed nature of the platform can get under some users’ skin in ways the iPhone and iPod touch do not.

Still, the iPad is likely to just be a starting point for Apple and for multitouch computing in general. There are obvious downsides to the device—we’ll tell you what those are—but it’s clear that it does sit in its own category that floats somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, and it serves different purposes than either its smaller or bigger siblings. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

A large chunk of the Ars staff contributed to this review, either in the form of writing full sections or by offering feedback and insights based on their own experiences. Because the 3G + WiFi version is not yet on the market, we all tested a WiFi-only iPad. We think it’s worth noting up front that the WiFi-only version is probably best if you only plan to use it at home or at Starbucks—you’ll definitely miss not having an Internet connection while out and about, and the (non-contract) 3G data plans are not bad at all, so long as you can stomach the extra $130 you’ll have to fork over for the privilege.
It’s also the case that there are some parts of the iPad “experience” that we didn’t get to cover here, but we think the next several pages will convey more about what using the iPad is like than you ever thought you wanted to know. So let’s get on with it!

Read the comments on this post

[From feature: Ars Technica reviews the iPad]

Pretty comprehensive review. Clearly a hands-on is needed to ‘get’ this. Still not clear if it is going to break out of being a niche product though.

Safety wear is essential.

Sennheiser RS-130 and HDR-130. Base station and two sets of headphones.

Supplementary headphones.

Just two little AAA NiMH batteries.

Base station and head set.

Installed in the home theatre room for late night viewing of 24, Lost and other noisy shows.

The base station charges two sets of headphones OK.

The SKY HD box conveniently outputs an analog stereo signal simultaneously with the optical digital 5.1

UPDATE: 4 Feb 2010.

Today this SCART->3.5mm headphone adapter arrived and I found it worked to get stereo out of my home theatre unit so now I can get headphone sound while watching DVDs or AVIs on a USB flash drive. The sound out on the SCART turns on when the HT speaker volume is set to Min (0).

Had the old USB cable so I didn’t need to get one. Downloaded the newest software from Canon and up and running. The envelope printing is much easier than the old printer and the OCR works better too, not that I ever find much need for that. Used up the sample photo-paper and thought the results were very good. I’ll probably never buy any more.

Cheap, prints quickly and well, works with OS X 10.6.2. Ink looks dear but I don’t print very much.

It tasted quite nice too.