Excruciating Pain
I've had my iPad for two days now, and to my dismay, it's causing me more and more pain to use. And that's mostly just non-typing use. When I actually type on it, it gets worse. I do have carpal tunnel, which doesn't really bother me when I use a computer. The iPad has been causing my fingers to swell -- I can see it that my wedding ring becomes impossible to take off.
From having carpal tunnel for many years and learning to manage it that it rarely bothers me, I see these problems giving me trouble:
- Having to hold it in my hands, requires using constant tension on the hand-tendons. This is a type of carpal tunnel aggravator (my doctor had some flexion-related term for it). I've tried to keep it just sitting in my lap and that helps, but doesn't quite keep it at my preferred viewing angle.
- Constant scrolling and dragging of fingers on the screen is also requiring this constant need to keep the fingers at a slight tension. On a computer keyboard, I use light key presses for scrolling, with my hands fully relaxed between presses.
- Typing on the iPad has the fingers hitting a hard surface. I have found that the softer the keys on a computer keyboard, the more they reduce the type of carpal tunnel aggravator that is caused by impact (even light tapping) to the fingers.
- Most of the touching of the iPad occurs with the iPad elevated, which means that my wrists have to be in a reverse-flex position, which is a carpal tunnel aggravator. The best wrist position is when the wrists are completely straight or down at 5-10 degrees. A wrist position like this can be attained using a laptop computer keyboard on one's lap.
I can see so many uses for the iPad, and love its gorgeous screen for use as a photography portfolio and selling/marketing tool, but I feel that with the pain it has been causing me just surfing the web on it for two days, the only use I could use it for would be for showing my photography portfolio to potential clients. And I wonder if that's enough to justify the price. I will be thinking hard about that and am going look into a 13" Mac Book Pro as an alternative, while i still have the option to return the iPad within the two-week return period.
