Pros: Small/light, good battery, decent apps etc.
Cons: Not as functional as laptop, no flash, torrents, work.

It can't replace a computer/laptop, but if travel and want a good ebook reader, movie player, decent mobile gaming platform and okayish web browser then it's probably the best thing around at the minute.

I'd certainly look at the Eee Pad before making a purchase: http://www.trustedreviews.com/Asus-Eee-Pad-Tr...top_review

wow that eee machine looks nice! the pros of the ipad with alot more functionality so i could still dl and watch movies on it, will keep an eye on that. thanks

Just to back up what Six16 said, that's probably the best choice at the moment. It's probably better to wait for the end of the year to get a tablet as the first quad core ones with higher pixel densities should be coming out.

Also have a look at the Asus EEE Slate. Has no keyboard, but a 12" display!

cons: its apple
pros: n/a

does it even support real movie formats or is it .mp4 only like iphone/pod?

Wait for Trance's comment, he probably has a couple lying around.

My brother recently got an ipad and he loves it. After playing around with it, it IS really cool for surfing the web, and using apps, but it's pretty much useless for everything else.

I'm thinking about getting the entry level macbook air for when it updates next month. Pretty much the same weight/size as the ipad but can do so much more with it.

next month? wtf
i got my mba 11 just two months ago.....

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/18/apple-to-...june-july/

and (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/20/intel-pre...cbook-air/)..
well shit, as expected, the refresh fixes my problems. and I bet the battery life will be higher too. time to fork off a buttload of cash to apple again. who wants 1st gen MBA 11???

Out of interest, do you have the 11" or 13"? I want something very portable that I can do dev work on and at the same time take out to clients, and have a long lasting battery. I don't think I would have any problem with the 11", and the costs rise quite a bit for the 13".

I have the loaded 11'', 1.8Ghz, 128GB ssd, 4GB ram. I exchanged it for a mbp 15, which I liked a lot, as well, but it's amazing how portable and functional it is at the same time. I can tuck it into a folder with papers for god's sake. I can't even say the same for the iPad. And the resolution is high enough that I can still work with two windows, fullsize keyboard, still big trackpad. The 13'' has virtually no advantage for the size increase. I was afraid the battery life of '5h' would be bad, but it turns out, at the brightness I prefer, ~40% it goes to more than 7, So I've not ran out of battery life during a whole day of meeting yet :) Also, on a plane, I found out it goes to like 11h+ with wireless off, nice surprise. Photoshop and office start in mere seconds because of SSD. The only problem is that I still have to worry about the battery life and I feel the processor lag, compared to i5.

Oh wow, sounds excellent! The new update should address the processor and battery issues.

ipad is useless unless all you ever do is watch youtube videos and play angry birds.

hot.

(ps. I don't get it.)

same

lol

Cons: Apple does what it wants, when it wants, might as well call it "has-you-by-the-balls-pad 2". Yes it has a lot of apps, more than android, but that's the only advantage I can think of. Android offers a much better desktop, custom applications without rooting, etc.

Don't be a sheep I guess. It's good, but there's better.

seems the EEE Pad Transformer is the one to go for running Android 3.0, has the battery life and screen of an ipad but with ALOT more functionality!

you want to write sh** on esreality/youtube/facebook/eMail using a touchpad keyboard? ... or urls or keywords in google ...
A real keyboard is the way to go, m8
iPad is just candy to play around and to show to others to make an impression on them you can afford such a useless tool

I'm timed at 28wpm typing on the iPad. Yes, I can type at 70wpm on a real keyboard, but the iPad keyboard is fine for urls, comments on esr like this.

I haven't booted my pc for ages thanks to owning an iPad - way more convenient than a laptop for livingroom use.

don't believe you, my brother also has an iPad (version 1),
he is not really using it, he uses a notebook instead ...
and I also used for 5 minutes or something ,didn't like that keyboard on the screen, can't imagine that it's good ... you just spend money on it and you are trying to justify your act of buying the IPad, because otherwise you would be stupid to have spent money on it ... I'd advise you to admit to your fault and learn from it it instead of trying to create a positive illusion ....it's good for really casual users of the internet ... but if you surf a lot, also write e-mails and comments,
a notebook is the way to go

Believe what you like, but I am typing this repl (and the above original posts) on an iPad. I don't post huge jamero style rants, so maybe that is why it isn't an issue for me?

A 5 min go on the keyboard obviously isn't long enough to get used to it, ofc.

as much as i hate apple products the mba seems like an excellent product

also, dont get a fucking ipad...

idiot Apple customer!

I'm far from an apple geek but I would consider waiting for the next generation of Macbook Air's. They'll be using sandy bridge and thunderbolt and are a viable option for running w7 on a laptop with solid build quality aswell as being almost as mobile as an ipad. Expected to come out in june/july i think. Other than that i wouldn't recommend switching to an ipad and expect to get a fragment of the functionality a laptop gives.

Like microwave is not a replacement for cooker, tablet is not a replacement for laptop.

microwave is the cooker in usa

explains why so much of their food taste like shit.

doesn't explain why you eat shit

why are you considering i pad 2 vs pc and not tablet vs pc?

also if you want multitasking just buy two, then you should be alright, worked for others

iPad supports multitasking now btw (not that it was ever really necessary for most people)

thought it would only have the usual pseudo multitasking that ios has on the iphone aswell?
but i gotta admit that i dont really follow the development of apple products since i will not buy one any time soon anyway

(not that it was ever really necessary for most people)

afaik you could not listen to music and surf the web or run an instant messenger and surf at the same time with the original ipad. that sounds to me like something the average user would do

I got a ipod touch 2 weeks ago mostly as a "inexpensive" way of reading pdf's and stuff in bed. I've looked at e-readers, but they are either more expensive and/or can't do half the stuff a ipod/iphone/ipad can do.

Also it's great for just browsing wikipedia, learning random stuff, watching youtube etc, and it can definitely play music and do something else at the same time. Oh and it isn´t a half bad portable gaming console either.

All in all I´m quite satisfied with it. I wouldn´t go for a ipad since it´s far too expensive and not very portable. But the ipod touch is just cheap enough to make it a really good and useful product imho.

and/or can't do half the stuff a ipod/iphone/ipod

well sure, their only use is to read from, and thats where they have the advantage over a device like the ipod touch (display, battery life, screen size, ...)

sure, however with e-ink you can't read in the dark without some external light source, and it's only black and white.

And as I said they are quite expensive, they only one that might be a decent buy is the kindle 2, but it isn't really easily available outside the USA. Battery life isn't really a issue, and the new high resolution screen on the latest generation of ipod's iphones makes the smaller screen good enough for reading nearly everything without too much zooming hassle.

Original iPad (as shipped) could play music at the same time as doing anything else - but only with the built in app from Apple, but not using 3rd party music apps.

For instant messengers, they could work in the background if they work using a "push" technology from the server end (eg, I use eBuddy to access MSN etc in this way, and if I get a message while surfing it gives a popup showing the msg, and allowing you to switch your focus application)

With the introduction of iOS 4.2 (a free download), original iPad v1 now also fully supports multitasking support for non-apple applications too, so a 3rd party can write a music player that runs in the background, or if you want to use an IM app that doesn't support push (eg, my IRC client) then they can sit in the background. I think they do get killed if left unused for more than 30 minutes though.

thanks for the info and good for everyone who has bought an apple product, seems fine now then

and i realize that many people were already happy with what ios orignially had, but really for me that would not have worked

I thought it might be a problem for me, but for most things it really wasn't an issue. Eg, the web browser maintains all state when open / closed, so you can switch back and forth between browsing and emails etc without issue - it's practically as quick as using alt-tab.

The only issue I had was with irc, but I setup a bouncer which logged things when I wasn't connected, so I could open/close that as often as I liked and it wouldn't miss anything when my client wasn't running.