Seriously? That's.. a lot. And probably quite a bit more than the drive is specced to handle, to be honest with you. Can you give us a bit of flavour of the way you work that means you use it so heavily?

There are three questions, then, which real people will ask about the iPad mini. Do I want it, can I afford it, and which model should I get. The answers to those questions will determine how many iPad minis Apple manages to sell. But the question which most of the press concentrates on — how does the iPad mini compare to its non-Apple competitors — is one which gets asked much less often than the Apple-as-company people tend to think.

Apple-as-Company vs Apple-As-Brand
Basically, it's a theory as to why Apple's stuff sells even though there are other similar devices that have higher specs...

yup, people will buy any old crap if they think its good, regardless of whether it is any good.

Especially if it's cheap. £70 less than an iPad? Let's have it. Of course it's better, look at these numbers.

As opposed to the Apple philosophy...of course it's better, look at the price(!)

The last time I used the optical drive in my MacBook Pro was to rip some copyright-free CD music we have to iTunes for a video I was making. That was about six months ago.

Apple is doing to the optical drive what it did to the floppy drive in 1997 - making it all but obsolete. Most of the software I use every day is downloaded from the internet or via the App Store. The last software I installed that used optical media is now four years old.

I still prefer buying music on physical CDs, and movies on DVD. While I will rip music to my Mac, DVDs are used in conjunction with a nice big telly and audio system. The music will have to come in via an external drive in the future. That's progress.

A woman in her 40s in work who'd say or do anything to be hip held up one of my CDs and said, 'You could probably download this, you know.'

I have tens of CDs in work alone

Went to MediaMarkt yesterday and had a play withe the new iPads.

Next to the new Samsung Ativ Windows 8 tablet and the Android tablets, the iPads felt very dated.

They also had an iPad 2 and New iPad running next to each other, the New iPad's display is much brighter than the 2, but I couldn't see any difference in the displayed image, the retina display didn't immediately spring out at me - that said, I found I had to look very hard with the iPhone 3GS and the retina display on the 4S to see any difference.

The retina screen might be down to how good your eyes are. The iPad 2 screen is pretty good, I have not seen the retina iPad screen yet, but the retina screens are adequate. Having screens with even higher resolution is redundant because your eyes cannot differentiate them.

This. I have iPads 1 and 3(retina) and have to have them side by side to see any real difference between the screens when viewing text; I don't see any difference at all when watching video. I had a look at the iPad Mini yesterday and have to say it's fabulous - just about the perfect size and screen proportions, and very light - my wife's Kindle FireHD feels like a slab of cement in comparison; again I had to compare the Mini directly to the iPad 4s on display to see any difference between the screens; I'm buying...

I found I had to look very hard with the iPhone 3GS and the retina display on the 4S to see any difference.