About two weeks ago, the wifi on my wifi-only iPad 2 began to get flaky. It would drop its connection every few days, but then come right back. Over time, though, the connect time would steadily shrink, while the down time increased. I took it to the Apple store twice on Friday, but (of course) they were unable to replicate the issue. This morning I was able to get online for about ten minutes--in two, five-minute bursts with a few hard restarts in between. Since then it has been lights-out for wifi. In desperation tonight I even wiped it down to factory freshness and tried getting online before restoring it. No soap. The thing absolutely refuses to get online.
And it's not like this was all I tried, either. I Googled and then tried every single diagnostic step that pertained to my situation, then tried every single appropriate remedy. Nothing worked. Nothing.
The Genius at the Apple store told me that since my iPad is no longer under warranty (by all of one month, btw) the best they could do is replace mine with a refurb of an identical iPad 2 for $250. Which leaves me to ponder the wisdom of paying $250 for an outdated product and losing the original one, versus paying twice that for something brand new and being able to keep the decrepit one as a digital photo frame or something.
Either way I am not happy about this mess. I had never planned on getting the "new" iPad (aka iPad 3). Maybe its successor, but not this one. It's just not enough of a leap past the iPad 2 to get me excited. Then again, by replacing mine with another, I essentially spend $750 and end up with something quite outdated. Nice still, but outdated.
Yet those appear to be my only choices. Chances are I'll stick with the iPad 2, mainly because I was already planning to update some of my studio gear, and $500 would take a significant chunk out of that already lean budget. Definitely not happy about this turn of events.
