On the other hand, the iPad's screen, while much larger than an iPhone's, is still considerably smaller than what you'll find on most laptops; it's closer in size to the screen of a large netbook. This means that less of each Web page will be visible compared to Safari on a "real" computer, and on many sites the text will be tiny. So you're still going to be doing more scrolling and zooming than if you were browsing on your Mac or MacBook.

One major difference between Safari on the iPad and the iPhone is which version of a Web page, desktop or mobile, you see when visiting a site. While the iPhone version of Safari is usually served the mobile version of a page--one with a tighter layout, fewer images, and other design differences that make the page easier to view on a tiny screen--Safari on the iPad usually gets the full-blown desktop version of the page. In most cases, this is a good thing, as the iPad's larger screen means you'll want to see that full version. The exceptions would be sites where the mobile versions of pages are optimized for touchscreens, or ones where the desktop version uses Flash for video while the mobile version uses H.264 or another non-Flash format; in those cases, you'd want to view the mobile version.

Assuming a Web server provides both mobile and desktop versions of its Web pages, which version you get depends on how the server is configured. When a Web browser contacts a Web server to request a page, the browser identifies itself to the server; based on that identification, the server sends (what the server administrator thinks is) the appropriate version of the requested page: a mobile-phone browser gets the mobile version, a Mac or Windows browser gets the desktop version. Most, but not all, dual-version sites serve mobile-optimized pages to the iPhone. (There are exceptions, however: some sites prefer to send desktop versions to iPhones, given that the iPhone handles desktop sites much better than the typical mobile phone.)

In our early testing, the iPad usually gets the full version of such sites. However, we suspect that most Web servers are not yet configured to recognize the iPad's browser--, for the Webdevs out there--so you're getting the desktop version of pages by default. Once servers around the 'net are updated to recognize Safari on the iPad, you may get different results on particular sites; for example, you may get a touchscreen-optimized version of a site instead of the desktop version.