The Apple iPad is now in its third generation, and for any writer who hasn’t yet discovered the benefits of working with the iPad, now is the best possible time to put things right. Not only because the latest iPad (commonly dubbed the iPad 3) is the best of the bunch so far, but because the cost of the supremely popular iPad 2 has been dropped to make room for the new model. So which model should a writer who is new to the iPad experience go for – the lower priced iPad 2 or the brand new iPad 3?

The third-generation iPad boasts a Retina Display that gives you an even higher resolution than the already impressive iPad 2 (2048 x 1536 pixels instead of 1024 x 768 pixels). It also has a dual core A5X processor instead of a dual core A5, which obviously means that it has more processing power. If you’re the kind of writer who would like to watch movies in the highest resolution possible and/or play games at full-throttle then the third-generation iPad could be well worth the extra investment, but otherwise the iPad 2 would be perfectly sufficient for you.

Although the introduction of the iPad 3 might make some people view the iPad 2 as being ‘old technology’ it really isn’t. On the contrary, there is plenty of mileage left in the second-generation model, especially for those of us who are more interested in the business side of things than in playing games and watching high-def movies.

There are currently over 200,000 applications that can be downloaded and used on the iPad 2, so whether you want to take notes, work on office documents, keep an electronic journal, check your emails, browse the web, read e-books (either with Apple’s iBooks app or by downloading the Amazon Kindle app), plan your next novel or screenplay, write and upload entries to a blog, listen to music as you write, listen to podcasts for inspiration or do virtually anything else that the iPad 2 can handle, there’s really no great need to feel compelled to opt for the iPad 3.

Of course, once you’ve discovered just how useful the iPad 2 is, you may wish that you’d gone for the third-generation machine straight away, so my advice would be to let your budget be your guide. If your budget will stretch to a third-gen device and a decent cover then go for it and you’re likely to be delighted with your decision, but if you’re counting the pennies or simply being careful in the current economic climate, the iPad 2 is well worth grabbing at the newly reduced price.

Find out more about the iPad at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk