Someone had to start a thread...

For once in my life, I was actually impressed by a new Apple product. The lower-than-expected price helped a lot with that! I have been searching for something like iPad for a long time, probably from the first time I watched Star Trek with their data pads.

From the demo, it looks as easy as an iPhone but capable of displaying pages in a large enough format to actually be able to read without squinting: you know, things such as equations. The open source EPUB format is a big bonus. The best deal is that it can be held and read just like a book. Laptops, netbooks, and large computer screens are awful for reading.

Movies on a small device are tolerable, on the iPad they will be usable.

The iPad could also be useful in photography. No, not editing, but certainly offloading memory cards and using the iPhoto app to take a good look at them. Yes, I discovered that it does have an optional USB port.

Sure, I'll wait for the second generation and I would not buy into the horrible AT&T 3G stuff even without a contract. But I really think this is going in the right direction and will leave dedicated eReaders such as Nook, Kindle, and that Sony thing in the dust.

What do y'all think?