iPad or iPad Which One?

technophobes, housewives and students.

it is meant for people that want entertainment, connectivity to net, news, books, and magazines.
it is meant for people that don't need or want to learn how to use powerful computers.

it is a multimedia consumption appliance. Get the whole concept of "Tablet Computer" out of your mind and it becomes obvious who it was meant for.
Time will tell how or if others will put it to use...

AHA like the domestic phone [ not a cellphone ] some time ago that could send e-mails and seems to have vanished now .

There was a reason it vanished. It had to be plugged into the wall. Bit restrictive methinks.

exactly...
We got four macs and an iphone kicking around, for years, and my wife is excited because she sent her first "Text Message" yesterday... to one of her kids.

She could use a device like that, it would allow her to show off our photos and videos.... be great for her work where she works in schools with handicapped/learning disabled kids.

and other than photoshop elements, and some web browsing, she still doesn't know much about computing... and doesn't need to, she has her own Geek Hostage, right here.... me "Don, make this..... do or look like..." or "Don, why is the computer....." "Don this doesn't seem to work, because..."

me? I think it'd suck, cause it can't crunch video or photos from my pro apps like cs2 and Final Cut.

My god Stefan, you still don't get it?! Why would you want to run Lightroom on a 10" screen with a 1GHz low power processor? Not to mention the fact that Adobe would have to rewrite it to run on the A4, and redo the UI for the iPhone OS's low-res touch interface. You've totally confused the uses for the iPad. As I said before, it's a reading device with some extra bonuses.

You've got this backwards. Pentax isn't bad because it doesn't sell well, the point is that Canon and Nikon must be quite good because they sell so many. The market isn't stupid. Above a certain price point a terrible product won't sell, no matter how much marketing goes into it (this probably only applies to products intended for adults). I could use an anti-Apple example here and reference the Newton or the Apple 3. Terrible product that didn't sell even with Apple's marketing muscle.

Because those products were, with a few exceptions, all terrible! Those UMPC makers simply made a small laptop with small screen and slow CPU, and then called it a Netbook and tried to sell them for more than a low-end normal laptop. They put no thought into them at all!

I disagree. The syncing stuff is very special. Most netbook users wouldn't have the first clue about how to set up their netbooks so it automatically synced from their main PC everytime they plugged in to recharge.

I also wanted to point out the noise and heat issues. A netbook or a laptop have hot relatively high-powered processors with cooling fans and the like. The ipad, like the iphone, has none of this. It doesn't make any noise at all, even when the CPU is running at full load. It does get a bit warm at full load but nothing like the base of a laptop does. I don't think you can underestimate the importance of these two things.

I do a lot of reading on my iPhone. Over the last 30 months since the release of the original I've probably read around a hundred novels on it. Furthermore most of my web reading is done on it via Google Reader. I flag the interesting articles for later re-reading and commenting on my laptop. I read all of my emails on my iPhone. The ones that need a lengthy reply are flagged for later response on my laptop. Most evenings while my wife watches some celebrity crap on TV I am sitting next to her reading something on my iPhone. I am definitely in the target market for the iPad, and it's got nothing to do with my photography. The Kindle DX is virtually the same price as the 16GB iPad, I know which one I'd rather have.

On some forums you'd just be called a troll and ignored

Or perhaps you'd prefer this response:

My personal view is that Windows PCs are electronic devices for people with no sense of aesthetics. In fact I'm constantly surprised that a PC user can take a decent photograph (no disrespect intended ).

Tim we can go on all day with this, and yes I do get it but like many here I don't see the use of such device since it does not bring anything new and I don't want to carry something around that doesn't add something besides weight.

No you don't get it now.
If the OS was based on OSX then lightroom would just run on 1GHz and 1GB of RAM, the odd screen size doesn't matter and the resolution is good enough, yes it might be a bit slow but if you keep the photos on it to the minimum it will do just fine and since I've lightroom on my PC all can be transferred and synced quite easily.
If it was like that then it would have been more useful, yes it would be like a laptop but is that so wrong?
Tweaked down OSX with an Iphone interface, that would be brilliant if you ask me.

Like Don said it might be the perfect device to the ones that know nothing or little about computers but besides that it has little to offer. Many here just aren't the target group.

When all the major news outlets, magazines, and newspapers set up thier failing online models to exploit this product in a pay per view, itunes like business model.... even some of us who don't need the device now, will reconsider when carrying the device seems like a better alternative than lugging books, newspapers and magazines around, or balancing a laptop in a crowded subway...

Indeed Don but we aren't there yet.
Also Apple picked the wrong screen for reading, they properly choiced it to reduce the price of the device and make it better for video.
You can not compare the iPad to an E-reader in my view although it do try to take over the function of the e-reader but still the e-reader is a better device for reading just because of the electronic paper screen.

If they have develop that type screen further and in colour suitable for playing video then we might have the perfect combo or maybe OLED might do the trick.

About balancing a laptop in the subway... if you mean with that you can read email and such then yes but for now there are limited programs to use on it.
Now what I see will happen is that they make a special version of a program just for the iPad and for OSX and you can of course pay double the price. But if people aren't interesting in that and just use it for email, browsing and multimedia then you've nothing to worry about.

If the iPad could take over just a bit more function of a laptop then it might interest a far bigger group.
I for example see no problem why it shouldn't be able to do text-processing, or excel and all those programs.
It has a docking-station with USB so you can plug in your mouse and keyboard if you're at work or at home and want to edit some text for example, it's a missed opportunity if you asked me, you can't work on the device (at the moment)
That's why I wished it had an OS based on OSX since you could install those programs on it then.

Stefan, please do your research before posting about the iPad again

Tim I get it's just for multimedia and it can view documents but there is no software to edit it or am I wrong?

You're wrong, sorry.

It comes with an full office suite, which can import and export Word and Excel docs. It's an iPhone OS port of Pages and Numbers (OS X apps).

Edit: Oh, Keynote as well (powerpoint equivalent)

Show me Tim I can't find it.
Or do you mean the appstores apps?

In the precise way you specified in your post - that is, I didn't need one.

There's some images of the apps at the bottom of this page:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/app-store/