You really have to use an iPad to realise just how intuitive the man-machine interface is. I bought an iPad 1 for my wife Christine - who is a mouse-phobic Luddite - with the main purpose intended to be her taking books on holiday. Few books have been read on the device but loads of on-line newspapers and cookery books and she's been sucked in to browsing the net, GMail, Facebook, crosswords, French word-of-the-day, repository for grandchildren's photos, Angry Birds, Talking Tom.... you name it! And no longer do we get addresses and dates wrong as our calendars and address books are synced.
She hasn't found Survive France yet - if she does I'll never get to use it!
Okay, I will hold my hands up and admit to being a mac addict but the ipad is truly fab.
I was sceptical when we bought ours as to just how much use we would get out of it but despite having two macs in the office with (James has two screens), plus my laptop, plus the girls both have a laptop and Tilly also has a school laptop, the entire household has found it really useful.
It was fabulous when I broke my leg for use on the sofa - way better than a netbook or laptop. I use it for teaching, there are some useful apps and the visuals are so good that one of the weather apps is also great for teaching students about weather. James uses the hands free cooking app - you can talk to it and it turns the pages so you can have it propped up as a cookbook, we've used it to take photos of recipes, magazine features, etc when we have been at other people's houses and as the screen is larger than the phone, you can then easily use the recipe / read the feature when back home.
We also watch films on it in bed at night and listen to the news in the morning.
We have an otterbox cover for ours which makes carrying it much easier, there is also a stand to prop it up - the otterbox covers make ipads and phones virtually indestructible and mean that you are confident using them in places that you wouldn't normally want to use an expensive piece of electrical equipment.
I have four laptops of varying ages and sizes as I update every couple of years for work reasons. I'm more than happy with them, one's netbook which is great when travelling, easy to use, perhps easier than an ipad... I've never seen the need to buy an ipad as Ron says, it'd be nice and novel but I can't see the need. Am I missing something...!
I think it is more a question of why you need it than of the pros and cons; while I wanted one very much, I couldn't figure out how, why or where I would use it and I think it is terribly awkward to carry,