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Setting up an iPad

Apple’s iPad and its iPad 2 are great looking pieces of mobile computing hardware.

You won’t get the best out of an iPad out of the box unless you have Apple’s iTunes digital media management software installed on a more powerful personal computer.

You can use iTunes to share files between your iPad and with a Windows personal computer or, if you’re an absolute Apple fan, one of Apple’s own machines.

DOWNLOAD AND LAUNCH ITUNES

Before you start listening to your favourite digital music and watching video you’ll need to download iTunes from www.apple.com/itunes/download/ to your personal computer. Version 9.1 of iTunes, or later, is needed for to synchronise files between the PC and the iPad device. The latest version for the 64 bit edition of Windows 7, which the majority of computer owners are likely to be running,  is 10.3.1.

Launch iTunes before you plug in your iPad to your computer. If you already have an iTunes account sign in with your user name and password.  If you don’t have an account you’ll need to open an iTunes account by clicking on iTunes Store>Sign In>Create New Account and follow the onscreen prompts.

If you haven’t already copied your digital music and video files from your personal computer to iTunes the software will ask if you’d like to. If you say yes, you’ll be able to synchronise your PC files to your iPad.

CONNECT VIA USB

Connect your iPad to the PC using the Apple supplied USB cable. It needs a USB 2.0 port on your computer to work. USB 2.0 ports come as standard on modern machines, although older machines only have the slower USB 1.0 ports.

When you have plugged in your new iPad and iTunes has recognised your iPad is connected to the PC iTunes will prompt you to register your new device.

When you have done that you will need to set up your iPad to work properly with iTunes. In the Setup Your iPad menu in the iPad’s options page select Automatically Sync.  Now, every time you connect the iPad to the PC it will automatically synchronise your files.

Now you can use iTunes to synchronise the contents of your iTunes library to your iPad and listen to, or watch, anything you like on the go. You can even use iTunes to sync contacts from your email account and calendar between your PC and iPad.

One Response to "Setting up an iPad"

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