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Pad 2 is clearly a winner. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Here are my first impressions after a week of use.

As like my ZDNet colleague and gadget guru Matthew Miller, I also bought an iPad 2 last week. Or rather, my very sweet spouse waited on line for me at Target and bought me one, since I refused to sit on a line that day and I was too engrossed in the reality of the day’s events.

I don’t want to duplicate Matthew’s excellent writeup of why he thought his iPad 2 purchase was justified. We’ve had a lot of reviews and previews of this product in the press over the last week that have gone into detail why most of us are in agreement that the iPad 2 is definitely the best tablet on the market right now.

 However, while I would agree with Matt that the iPad 2 is an excellent tablet computer, it’s definitely a product where certain design considerations were made that I don’t necessarily agree with, and I think should definitely be re-evaluated by Apple in their planning and design for the next iteration, the iPad 3.

One of the biggest differences between the iPad 2 and its predecessor is the dramatic reduction in thickness and the overall ergonomic design. Although I can appreciate Apple’s desire to make the product lighter and thinner, I think they may have actually gone too far.

Personally, I liked the overall design of the iPad 1. The volume control, mute/orientation lock and the power button were all flush aligned with the straight edge design of the aluminum housing, and they also were more prominent in how far their control surfaces stuck out from the casing.

ZDnet has the Editorial HERE!