I'm not seeing it. When my father and I both played around with it in BestBuy we were both were struck with how fuzzy it was. Sure, it's not bad but the way they were advertising it made it seem like it was much more revolutionary than it actually was. The resolution wasn't bad but it was basically comparable to a netbook. I was not impressed at all.

You know, it's not that I want to trash the iPad as a piece of technology. It really isn't that bad. The media has just made it seem much more revolutionary than it actually is, it is cost prohibitive and there are much more affordable alternatives that simply have more functionality for the money.

Lol, a partisan attack quote, and a dumb one, too. Imagine that.

You don't have to be partisan to know that reading about our one party system is a waste of time.  And that's if I'm reading a biography of Obama, Bush Sr, Reagan, Clinton, etc...

YouTube has mixed quality viewed on the iPad but that's the mixed quality of YouTube.  Also, if you have been watching hi-def big screen TV or using a large hi-def monitor, it's not the same experience.  You are right that the "revolutionary" part is indeed just a claim at present (i.e., marketing hype).  It remains to be seen what sort of acceptance and success the iPad will actually have.  It is brilliantly designed though from a simply aethetic viewpoint.

I have looked at several other tablets and so far, only the iPad looks to be a sure thing for the long haul.  The JooJoo has a lot of promise but raises a lot of questions as to reliability and long-term success.  HP's Slate and some of Acer's offerings look good (the Slate foremost among them) but but have some issues such as software freezes, loss of touch tracking, etc. andhands down, the iPad is currently the best "out of the box" product for reliability.  The support and promotion Apple has invested in it give it a long-term future.  These things are important from a business perspective.

I looked hard for a comparable alternative for the niche use I have in mind but this was it.  It is not a netbook or fully functional computer OS.  People should know that up front.  I'd suggest an iPhone or the iPod Touch as a 'test the waters" product if someone isn't sure about the iPad. 

Apple is onto something here with their latest products--they are tapping into the generation that doesn't want to "operate a computer" and that just wants to "use something cool straight from the box".  I'm not seeing anyone else do it better yet (and it hurts my years of Mac scoffing, PC tweaking and building pride to say that).

I had just got the iPod Touch for my son and he is addicted to it but I literally laughed out loud when the iPad was revelaed.  My first thought was, "Who in the heck is going to buy that!?".  The fact that I am willing to get one (I have resisted Macs from the start when the internet was still a baby) says a lot about the quality of it--flaws and limitations aside. 

How do you figure that? It doesn't even run flash.

I've never liked Apple to begin with.  Who the hell wants to buy a device that runs on three-year-old technology (The iPhone OS)? You can't even upgrade the hardware of this friggin' device, unlike PCs.  I hope that this device gets worse reception than Vista did three years ago.  And another thing, Vista wasn't all that bad.  It was a bit slow and clunky but it worked.  At least Vista could MULTITASK!!!

Hell, you can't even customize the UI of an iPad either.  (Unless if they have an "App" sort of like Windowblinds, but I don't think that they do.)

"The best web-browsing experience"? What a joke.  No Flash is a disappointment. You can't run different browsers other than Safari (You probably already knew that), and worst of all, No multitasking.  Who browses the web without tabs these days?  Nobody.  The 3G download speed is probably no faster than my broadband connection anyway.

And how many apps are available for this trash device?  Not even one million?  While PCs have access to trillions of programs for everything imaginable.

This device is the absolute worst piece of technology Apple has ever marketed.  (If it came out in say, 2006; BEFORE the iPhone existed, then it MAY of been cool.)

And lastly, what's sad is that Apple fans are already putting new hype into the "2nd Gen" version or whatever.  The 2nd Gen will still not likely run Flash, have USB ports, or even Multitask.

Newer isn't always better people.  Just stick with your dated MacBook Pros or PCs if you want "the best web-browsing experience", and I can't stress this enough, multitasking.

Okay, I'm done. 

*end rant*

I like that.

No--it's not the PR its the actual experince with it.  Will work great in sales for me--not much else I will do with it and I DO wish it was cheaper.  I do get their point though--I don't need a netbook and it would not work for what I will use the iPad for.  Two different animals.

I posted this from the iPad simulator, which is the same thing and it works fine.

256MB.  >200MB for apps. Because it does not multitask the apps would access this for their own use.

Creates a stable but less flexible OS. 

http://www.9to5mac.com/ipad-256mb-ram-single-core-processor-4493093592 

I had to go into HTML view to get the text editor to accept input, but that's fairly trivial.  The on-screen keyboard isn't hard to use at all (I've used one for a while) and the display is a standard 1024x768, slightly larger than a netbook.

It has 256 MB RAM.

The sucky thing is that the more popular the iPad & iPhone becomes, the more likely it will suffer from virus attacks and hacking, just like PCs.  iPhone viruses already work on the iPad because it uses the same OS, so don't think that because the iPad is from Apple, you're automatically safe.  Do iPads even have antivirus/antispyware software anyway?

I would not think it possible, unless you jail broke it, for the ipad to be infected (well either that or apple are shit at programming). Its just too locked down the only programms that you can run on it are directly from apple.

I dont think appart from apps you could actually get any from of excicutible to run on an ipad. Virus are somthing only windows users and idiots get, UNIX based cores (Mac and Linux) is pretty hard to infect unless you intentionally run a virus.

The only reason I would ever get an ipad is to jailbreak and use flash.  It's a piece of crap yes, but I have internet access in nearly every room of my house (Checking my router I have over 20+ things connected, in my room alone I have 2 pcs, a netbook, a laptop, a ps3, and a ds that can connect to the internet ) and I've been considering lately a piece of crap that will let me surf the internet on the couch without having to type things.

The ipad will do all of this better then a netbook.  All of these things being surfing the web and being a piece of crap