Update - iPad and Dell for reading Comics

As I've mentioned, I'm a fairly new user of an iPad (about 2-3 months now), and have had a Dell Duo (touchscreen Windows-based netbook).

I love the Duo for its flexibility - nice screen design (flips over for "regular" netbook usage, or for tablet use). However, as a tablet, the Duo is quite heavy, and the "flip" from landscape to portrait and back is noticeably slower than on the iPad.

The iPad has a larger screen than the Duo, which seems to align to the appropriate size required to read comic books.  Comics "pop" off the screen, and the simple enlarge functions allow for the odd panel which is difficult to read to be blown up to a more convenient size.  Flipping from landscape to portrait works well (it can be a little faster, sometimes if you are doing so a lot, the small lag is irritating).

I found "Cloud Reader" which reads comics in the CBR/CBZ format.  For the uninitiated, CBR and CBZ files are just jpg images which are collected (e.g. all pages for a single issue of a comic) into a compressed file - CBR files are compressed using RAR, and CBZ files are Winzipped.  This format makes comics easy to organize, as the unit is single-issues, a direct analogue to paper comics.  "Comic Reader" also works.  Both Cloud Reader and Comic Reader are available free of charge through iTunes.

What I do find irritating, is the need to link to the iPad through iTunes to move comics from my network drives to the iPad - very irritating.   It would be great to be able to directly drop files directly onto the iPad, and read them in different applications.  From what my current level of knowledge of iPads understands, the comic files are transferred to a specific application (e.g. Cloud Reader or Comicbook Reader) - once transferred, you can't use other apps to read or open them.  Compare to the Duo, where the files exist in a folder, you can relatively simply choose one of many different applications to read the comics.

I do run into the odd comic which doesn't render in a particular reader.  It would be nice to be able to experiment and open in many different iPad applicaitons, to see if there is a pattern (e.g. I suspect that some comics are scanned in some odd format, or scanned in a less standard compression program that makes the oddities stand out, however, it is too much of a pain to re-transfer the issues to the iPad into another application to test - it is easier to just read the odd issue on a desktop computer).

This inflexibility (or "feature") of the iPad is probably the one lingering issue which makes the experience less than perfect.