I'm a an artist, writer, photographer, and retired art teacher. I usually use Photoshop and Topaz on my Mac to create art from my own photos. I already have a Kindle Fire which usually meets my needs for playing games, checking email, watching Netflix movies when I'm not home, but we will be taking several trips outside of the U.S. over the next few years and I wanted something small & light with some good artistic apps to use when traveling. I can use it for other things, but my Kindle works fine for just about everything else. So I purchased the mini iPad 2 ---not the latest version. Although the price at Target was about the same as Apple was offering, it came with an $80 Target card on Black Fri Weekend, so I thought it was a good deal.