Loaner iPads: ur doin it rong

[pne]

So I'm in Essen again on business, and I'm staying in a different hotel this time.

I saw on their web site that they loan you iPads if you want, so I called them and reserved one.

This evening, I arrived and I picked up the device together with my keycard.

Up in my room, I played with it a little, before I started worrying about leaving my data around. If I set up mail, for example, so that I could try that out, how would I get my password off?

So I googled "iPad remove private data" (or something like that) and found a tutorial explaining how to reset the thing to factory configuration.

To be safe, I asked at the reception whether it was OK to reset the iPad before giving it back. She said (something along the lines of) "Uh, go ahead and do stuff like clear your browser history. But the apps that are already on it? Yeah, those should still be on there."

Uh.

I mean, the thing already has a motley collection of apps that I imagine a succession of guests left on it... and the calendar timezone is set to St. Petersburg, Russia... and in the "Store" preferences, there's some random customer's Apple ID... and that's the way you want it to look for guests?

I don't know, but for public/loaner iPads like this scheme, I would expect them to make a "known good" image, and then after each guest returned it, to erase the entire thing and restore from that image - removing all traces of private data and stupid apps people might have installed.

So I doubt I'll do much with the thing after all; might end up giving it back soon, in fact.

The free WiFi is handy, though - but I can use that with my laptop. (Am doing so to post this, for that matter.)