My parents just bought me an Ipad for an early Christmas present. I have been debating on whether or not to get one because I had to upgrade both my desktop and laptop this year. I was thinking that I really couldn't justify getting one since I got the new laptop.
Now that I have one, I have to say...it's pretty darn cool. It's very portable. You can surf the net, get your email, and there are new apps coming out every day that allow you to use it for other things too. It will be good for me when I am traveling, and I don't want to lug the laptop around. I do a lot of photography, so I will have to use my laptop for editing images...the ipad does not take the place of a laptop. I also use it as a portfolio for my images, as it has a wonderful screen. It does not support flash right now, but I have a feeling that will change as more and more app developers are coming out with new flash capable browsers for the ipad. There are apps that allow you to text from your Ipad as well, since that is not normally a part of the Ipad set up. The map/gps feature on both the Iphone and the Ipad are great. I've used it several times when my conventional gps got lost.
I guess it just depends on what you want to do with it: listen to music or podcasts, check you email, surf the net, chat, watch movies...you can do all that. There are new productivity apps for note taking (even using a stylus to write with). I think the capabilities will be expanded over time. Apple just makes a good product.
There are rumors that the second generation Ipad is coming, but no one knows for sure when that will happen. I thought they might do it for Christmas, but I think we would know something by now if that was the plan. I really think it will be next spring. Again, no one knows what the upgrades will be: some say a slimmer design with a front facing camera for video chat. A software upgrade should be coming any day now.
