Academic

WILL THIS BE the week of iPad 2? I?m actually thinking of buying one for a friend of the family who?

By Glenn Reynolds

WILL THIS BE the week of iPad 2? I’m actually thinking of buying one for a friend of the family who’s stuck in a nursing home. They don’t have in-room internet, so a 3G iPad might be the way to go. It’s pretty boring there. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Doug Orr emails:

Got my iPad last July, and since then have been in the hospital twice for 3 days and 8 days. I would have gone stir crazy without the iPad. Nurses loved asking about it, all the doctors said their wives had one already. Ha!

Also, i got to avoid the dreaded daytime television shows. Those things will kill you.

Yeah.

And reader John Williams writes:

My father in law had a stroke about two years ago and is living in an assisted care facility. We bought him a first generation iPad about 6 months ago and it is a huge hit. He carries it with him wherever he goes almost like a kid with a security blanked.

He struggles with email a bit but is able to communicate far more with his family than any other medium. He manages his investments, keeps up on the news, reads Instapundit, and plays Yahtzee.

Technical support for him using the device has been pretty easy as well. You just can’t get into the kinds of trouble you can with a “real” computer.

Good point. And reading InstaPundit is bound to be therapeutic. Another reader says that I’ll be able to pick up an original model iPad for $100 less once the new one comes out. Maybe I’ll pick up one of those; it should be entirely adequate for nursing-home amusement purposes.

And reader Barry Dauphin emails:

Maybe you’ve hit on to a bigger idea. Nursing homes should try to get them in bulk for their residents. Learning how to use them would be very stimulating and there’s all kinds of things you can do with them. Apple could cut deals, the way they do with schools and computers.

That sounds like a really good idea. Maybe Apple should donate some of the first-gen iPad stock to a nursing home or two as an experiment.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on March 05, 2011 (boomark / email).