iPad question
 

After 1.5 years of sterling service my iPad overnight just became incredibly slow. Painfully slow.

It's not the connection or the ISP because all our other devices work just fine.

Anyone have any idea what this might be? Do these things need to be de-fragged or cleaned up somehow from time to time? If so, how?

Have you ever turned it "hard" off? Also, there's a different way to turn it off that clears/resets some things. It's harmless, hold the home button and power button at the same time until you get the power off slider.

Also, do you ever close running apps?

What ^ he said. Reboot it.

And yes, you can "kill" apps without rebooting as well. double press the main button. That should bring up a list of the running apps at the bottom of the screen. Press and hold one of the apps that you don't need to be running. After a couple of seconds, they'll display a small "do not enter" sign and start to wiggle. Click the do not enter sign to kill the app.
http://www7.pcmag.com/media/images/2...nning-apps.jpg

You didn't happen to upgrade to the latest iOS version or upgrade all your apps, did you? Despite Apple's assurances, the new versions are written to take advantage of the hardware in the iPad 3 and become resource hogs on the older models. Once I installed iOS5 on my iPad1, it became a dog.

That's a good point. I just checked my apps and had every one running in the background. Has to make a difference.

You can also reboot by holding the power button and home button simultaneously. Keep holding both down past the red shutdown slider, until you see the Apple logo and release.

Thanks for the replies. Have tried all suggestions but without success.

Any other bright ideas? The iPad is glacially slow.

Try resetting it / reloading it from itunes... If it's loaded to the gills, give it back some elbow room... I noticed the latest OS update (5.1?) made my original Ipad slower too...

Turn off push email and location services as a test. I've had both of these processes hog the CPU on my iPhone 4S a few times.