There used to be a very famous argument between Cisco and Nortel when they were trying aggressively to capture the market share for voice networking in the enterprise segment. The classic argument was — Nortel claimed to offer 300+ features to every phone; and Cisco simply said “we will give you the 10 features you actually use”. Guess who the market leader is today!

Same thing with tablets — every OEM has a tablet offering — that includes several features that iPad does not, but the very fact that every one of them has to dub itself an “iPad killer” says something about the iPad. For we are yet to witness that is a xoom-killer or a playbook-killer or a galaxy tab-killer. I am not a fanboy of Apple, but I believe they are still the leader.

The iPad 2 is an evolutionary product and they simply chose to add the most critical advancements to its predecessor. So is an iPad 2 for you?

First of all, as I have mentioned multiple times in this blog, iPad is not a magical device. You are least likely to continue to be glued to it if you don’t have a strong use case for it. And the single most compelling use case for the iPad (or any tablet) is that it has to replace your usage of laptop entirely or partially.

The iPad 2 has a handful of advancements over the first gen version, but most of them are relevant only to sub-sections of people. The only feature relevant to everyone is the dual-camera. Please note I am not discussing IOS 4.3 features, which is available to previous models as well.

I wrote this review more than 2 weeks ago, but did not want to publish it until I felt an iPad 2 in my own hands. Which I did — it is actually lighter than the number tells you (15% lighter) but it is very sleek. The verdict should hardly surprise you — “go-buy” if you don’t have an iPad and “no-buy” if you have the earlier version.