Jeanne, I am certainly no expert but I'll help you with the little that I know. I just bought mine a month ago. I got the I-pad 2 with 16 gb. You will want more gigs if you plan to load a bunch of movies onto it. I also have a kindle fire. I love it for reading books but I'm not crazy about the small screen for doing facebook. It's ok for email. I don't know how the I-pad mini compares in size to the fire but that should be easy enough to find out. I'm sure you will get a lot more help from others here.