Well apparently everyone hates this thing. And for understandable reasons, I guess. But here is why I can ignore a lot of the "issues" with this thing.
Everyone complains: No camera,
Okay, honestly I have a camera on pretty much everything that has a battery nowadays, I can survice without another one, and I don't videoconference very often, sure it'd be nice, but not a deal breaker.
No Flash, whine whine whine, last time I looked most websites use flash for advertising, honestly, I'd prefer to not have to look at the flashy "100,000th visitor" ad and if you're complaining about your lack of farmville or other flash game, get a life. If you're complaining about hulu, oh well, I'm sure there will be an app for it, youtube has an app. So honestly, I could care less about flash when it really gets down to it.
People complain there's no multitasking, what do you really care, apps save the data everytime you close them, so yeah, it's an extra touch instead of just sliding on over to another app, stop being lazy. Okay so you can't read your aim messages, check facebook, and look at porn all at the same time, honestly, it's not that big of a deal, take things one at a time. You can still listen to music and browse the web at the same time.
Think about how this can be used, there are stylus based programs already available for this. Think about how you can use this in a hospital setting.
Think about the never-ending nightmare that is the paperwork that a doctor must complete, think of how many stories there are of lost paperwork, paperwork issues, digitization and what not. Every time a patient record is created on paper it now is entered into a computer system. Why not take the paper out of the equation, you can do that with an iPad, they already have applications for it.
500 dollars for a textbook reader, seems like a lot right? Well, I commute to school, I study at school, so I carry textbooks with me, now 1.5 pound thing that I can do virtually everything I can do with a normal textbook versus 15+ pounds in actual paper weight? My back will take the 1.5 pound thing. Especially since I will recoup that 500 dollar starting cost in TWO semesters of buying digital textbooks.
With high definition video, okay, so it doesn't fit you're 16:9 aspect ratio, I'm sorry, unless a device is a tv, 16:9 aspect ratios look dumb and disproportionate. Most screens, even HDTV's are not 16:9 aspect ratios. A 4:3 aspect ratio is just fine and dandy. If you're all good students intent upon medical school, then you'll know that an excellent extracurricular is research, you happen to do a lot of presentations when conducting research, or at least presenting your findings, it's a fact. Now look at what you can do with the presentation programs on the iPad, it's aspect ratio is set up to be exactly compatible with 90% of the projectors you'll find, and you won't have to juggle laserpointers, whiteboards, and a projector, you can write notes with your iPad that appear on screen, or you can use a "laser pointer" that is really your finger.
Honestly, I see a lot of real use out of this, sure not a lot for media use, but I've got a laptop, an iPod, and a Blackberry for that. The iPad seems like an ideal product, at this point, considering price, battery, warranty, software options, and utility.
So food for thought
P.S. - The price isn't that bad, the JooJoo, a competing tablet, has only a browser, it's 500, no 3G, and nothing close to the app store, no one even really knows crap about the HP slate, and the Archos 9 is about the junkiest you can get, considering it has a 2 hour battery and it runs Windows 7 (which I hear people want) but to fit that all in, it's thick, has a crappy screen, is expensive, and only runs 3 programs at a time.
