5 common iPad problems solved

As well received as Apple's new iPad has been, it's not been without a few technical hiccups. Here we've rounded up the most common faults and annoyances and provided a solution for each.

Obviously, if you suspect that something is badly wrong with your iPad, your first port of call is to take the faulty unit back to your point of purchase for a replacement.

1. iPad not charging or slow to charge

The iPad is a hungry beast, and requires a high-powered USB port to charge. Plug it into an old laptop and you get a 'not charging' message.

Even with relatively recent laptops it doesn't always work. For example, even on a recent aluminium MacBook, if we plugged our iPhone in first, then plugged in the iPad, it wouldn't charge.

However, plug the iPad in first and your MacBook will allocate its USB port to "high power" and work. But even if your iPad charges when connected to your USB device, you'll still find that it charges quite slowly.

For the fastest charge possible plug your iPad directly into the mains using the supplied charging plug.

Another useful tip to know is that if you put your iPad into sleep mode, then even older, lower-powered USB ports will be able to charge it, albeit slowly.

2. Can't connect to a Wi-Fi network

There has been a lot of press coverage over the iPad's Wi-Fi problems. The jury is still out on whether this is a genuine design fault, since the vast majority of iPad users haven't experienced these issues, but we did experience something similar with our test unit one day when web pages failed to load.

And that's despite having all 3 signal bars lit in our Wi-Fi connection, which remained unbroken. We solved the problem with a hard reset - simply press and hold the iPad's Sleep/Wake button until a screen asking you to slide to power-off appears. After your iPad has reset simply press and hold the Sleep/Wake button again to restart it.

3. Can't sync Outlook Calendar or Contacts

Your iPad can sync events from your Outlook calendar and contacts on a PC. While this often works flawlessly, syncing isn't a trivial matter, and your computer, or the iPad, can get confused.

The end result is that nothing syncs properly. The solution is actually pretty straightforward. You need to reset your iTunes Sync History (in iTunes choose Edit/Preferences/DeviceHistory/Reset Sync History). Doing this should have you syncing properly in no time.

For more information see this Apple Support article.

4. Losing the network after sleep

If you find that your iPad is losing connection to the network after it's been to sleep and you've woken it up, try turning the brightness up slightly. That's right, we're not kidding, and it does sound like tech voodoo, but several users have reported that it completely fixed their problem.

5. Argh! There's no word count in Pages!

Unbelievably, Apple hasn't included a word count in Pages. While this might not matter to the casual user who simply wants to write a letter to their bank manager explaining why their iPad purchase tipped their account into the red, for anybody who has to write professionally, it matters. The solution is found in an app called Pastebot.

It's a clipboard manager that not only enables you to copy multiple items to the clipboard, including images, but also gives you an automatic character or word count on any text you've selected.

If you're too tight to spend the £1.79 that Pastebot costs on the App Store, don't forget that there are quite a few websites that will enable you to get a quick word count on pasted text, like Wordcounttool.com, for example.