You got the iPad home, you've watched the swanky iPad Guided Tour videos on Apple.com. Now it's time to go beyond upsizing all your iPhone apps and get to the nitty-gritty of iPad awesomeness. Check out our list of tips and tricks that'll have you wowing your friends and working more efficiently with your new device.

Check your App updates

If you have an iPod touch or iPhone, check for app updates with iTunes. There's a good chance some of your apps are ready to to be updated for the iPad.

Charge Away - No wait, Not With That!

The iPad charges with a different wattage (10W) than the iPhone. So your old iPhone wall charger won't work. Also, it takes approximately twice as long to charge the iPad with your computer. So use the iPad wall charge. 

 

Lock 'er Down

The orientation lock button. You're gonna need it. The iPad's accelerometer is powerful sensitive. Find a happy spot and use the button.

You're Not Trapped in the iBookstore

There are gazillions of public domain books in the ePub format on the web. Some of those free books are available in the iBookstore for free, but not all. All of them should work with your iPad and show up in iBooks.

Here are a few places to get books:

Google books
Project Gutenberg

You can find more book sources here.

Once you've downloaded those books, just drop them into iTunes and sync them to your iPad.

Don't forget, you can also use the Kindle App for iPad. 

 

Send SMS

Just because you don't have a phone in the iPad doesn't mean you can't send SMS to friends. There are tons of free sms apps in the App Store you can try out. Also, you can send SMS with AIM. Just fire up AIM and to send a text message to a friend, just send the message to your friend's phone number with +1 at the beginning.

Where are My iPad Only Apps?

iTunes pulls a cruel trick by putting your iPad only apps at the bottom of your apps list. Just scroll on down to the bottom. There they are.

You can also put iTunes in list view to scroll quickly through your apps and organize by Kind.

 

Mute It

A long press on the iPad volume down button will put it in mute mode.
Shhhhhh....

Share Documents

If you're wondering where Pages, Numbers and other Apps that save files keep their files. Take a gander at the Apps tab when you plug in your iPad. Scroll down and you'll see the File Sharing. Check out the apps that utilize fie sharing and the actual documents.

When you're ready to sync your files, use the Add.. button to add your files and work with them on the go. RAD!

No Facebook iPad App? Try facebook.com.

If you're concerned that the Facebook app is still stuck in iPhone land, why not try Facebook.com. Because the iPad is bigger, the sites that were difficult to read on the iPhone are usable on the iPad.

My Old iPod/iPhone Dock Stuff

Bad news, we couldn't the iPad to work with some of our old iPod /iPhone dock stuff. Obviously, it wouldn't fit in some, but in others it just gave us a warning that the product wasn't made for the iPad. We even tried hooking it up to our car stereo via the dock connection. Maybe a software update will allow us to dock in the future.

Copy and Paste Photos Instead of Sharing

You can only email five pictures from the Photo app using the Email button. You can copy far more and paste them into the Mail app. Need to send 15 pictures? Copy and paste them from the Photo app into a Mail document.

Create Your Own Wallpaper

iPad wallpaper images should be 1024x768, or you can just use this super rad one. To assign your image to your home screen background or lock screen, launch the Photo app.

Tap to enlarge the image you want to use. Tap on the share button. Tap Use as Wallpaper. Resize the image to your liking and tap Set Lock Screen, Set Home Screen or Set Both.