Verizon Will Sell iPad+MiFi Bundles, Starting Oct 28th

wiredmikey quotes from today's much-anticipated announcement from Apple that Verizon is joining the iPad club, which means that: "iPad will be available at over 2,000 Verizon Wireless Stores nationwide beginning Thursday, October 28. Verizon Wireless will offer three bundles, all featuring an iPad Wi-Fi model and a Verizon MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, for a suggested retail price of $629.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 16GB + MiFi, $729.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 32GB + MiFi and $829.99 for iPad Wi-Fi 64GB + MiFi. Verizon Wireless is offering a monthly access plan to iPad customers of up to 1GB of data for just $20 a month. In addition, Verizon Wireless will also offer all three iPad Wi-Fi models on a stand-alone basis." Since the Verizon bundles don't seem to offer the kind of subsidy that many phone purchases do, it would make sense to shop around for the same functionality (Wi-Fi iPad + 3G service) from other carriers. For instance, if you live within Sprint's city-centric 3G footprint, and want more than 1GB of data, Virgin Mobile's branded MiFi offers unlimited transfer (within the limit of the network — it's no FiOS, but I've used it with Skype and Google Voice) for $40/month.

Comments

1gb/month

[pilgrim23]

And with the crisp iPad screen I will be able to download/stream all my favorite movies for.... enter bill shock. The cheap up front, soak them on bandwidth American telecom paradigm needs to needs now.

Re:1gb/month

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to take this opportunity to once again state how much of a rip off a laptop is. I can buy a very capable desktop for less and it will be useful for more than just browsing pictures and watching youtube and running basic applications. Honestly, my Dell Inspiron is just as capable as a laptop for most purposes and costs much less while being a useful gaming machine at the same time.

Re:1gb/month

[nine-times]

I can buy a very capable laptop with 3G capability for less than that

which of those laptops has a high-quality 10" screen, is 0.5" thick, and weighs 1.5 lbs?

my Samsung Epic is just as capable as the iPad

Your Samsung Epic has a small screen.

Here's what you have to understand: it's not about raw computing power, and it's not about being able to hack the kernel. The people who bought iPads are interested in usability for certain specific applications. It's a web-browsing appliance, an ebook reader, a document viewer, a picture browser, a giant iPod, and a bunch of other things. Being the right form-factor is essential. If you don't care about the form-factor and usability features, then you aren't its target audience at all.

Re:1gb/month

[whisper_jeff]

Depends on your needs and desires but things like the Marvel app (and the various other comic apps) makes reading comics a pleasure (no, seriously - this is an absolutely fantastic app and I highly recommend it to any comic fan out there) and the various sketching apps makes doing design brainstorming a breeze (and sending those sketches to clients easier than scanning and emailing), to name but two quick things that a laptop fails at. As a media consumption device, laying in bed, it's better than a smart phone for the screen real estate and better than a laptop for it's size and weight. For a pick-up-and-go computing device, it is superior to a laptop, imho. For a _computer_, it is inferior but I didn't buy it to be a computer. I have a desktop for desktop-y work and I have a laptop for laptop-y work. That said, I still regularly use my desktop but, since getting my ipad, I haven't used my laptop at all...

Suffice it to say there are a ton of other uses but I'm at work and don't feel like writing a long post on the subject... :)

What constitutes equivalent?

[dazedNconfuzed]

I could sell you a desktop computer powered by a car battery for even less.

Yes, useful form factor costs extra.