After a late night ensuring the door-bell was working(!), I woke this morning and greeted a man delivering a small, white box. The iPad 2. But what’s the first thing to do when you receive one of the most popular gadgets of the moment? My answer: Install Apps!

Apps, IMO, transform the iPad 2 from shiny white (or black) tablet device into a personalised multi-use device for reading, writing, gaming, painting, socialising and much more!

I spent a while downloading a huge array of applications from the AppStore, so here they are;

spotify, myO2, DropBox, weather, clock, liveprofile, skype, vouchercloud, shazam, nectar, sainsburys, twitter, calcuylator, sky sports, sky mobile TV, sky+, sky news, iLoaderHD, bigoven, coolpapers, winmdowshop, ebay, photosynth, imovie, photoshop express, wordpress, marvel, IMDb, DC Comics, Flixster, Rightmove, Yelp, GarageBand, Big top 40, Engadget, BBC News, IGN, Mashable, Google Earth, Google, Fisher Scientific, QI, Banner, bbc iplayer, good food, TV Guide, 4OD, stumbleupon, flipboard, facebook, friendly, airvideo, instapaper, tunein radio, penultimate, world of goo, pages, keynote, numbers, bloomberg, CNBC RT, RealRacing2HD, Angry Birds, Next, Wired, T3, Telegrtaph, The Times, Qwiki, betfair, convert units, mBox Mail, GoodReader, and a couple of web based apps.

Amongst the jungle of apps (helpfully found via iPad alternatives to those installed on my iPhone), the following made it onto the first page of the home screen, and are probably worth a look yourself;

It’s very much a case of installing apps that you want, in order to utilise the personal benefits of having an iPad. I’ll review the iPad 2 and corresponding applications in more detail after a couple of days playing with it!