<p>I think many people will continue to have both for the foreseeable future. However, more and more companies are providing their senior execs with IPads and they’re often being used for distribution of materials for Board meetings to cut down on the amount of paper that is required for those documents.</p>
<p>I jsut wonder if regular business software and software writing tools could be loaded, I mean something like SAP,…and I do not see much point of Ipad if you cannot see anithing there, I mean I do not even like to use laptop screen much, jsut too small, but bigger laptops are too bulky and heavy (although cheaper, bu not convinient to carry) and I do not even weare glasses / contacts.</p>
<p>I just told dh that I wanted the new iPad. I got a little Dell netbook two years ago when ds1 got his laptop for college; there was a deal so that it only cost me $150. We don’t have a smart phone so I just wanted something to be able to take with me anywhere to check e-mail, etc. I’ve outgrown it. The battery life stinks, we had to get a new cord for it, etc. Recently, taking ds2 on a college visit, I began having iPad envy as I saw so many people with them. We actually have one from dh’s work that we get use of, but it can’t stay home with me during the day. I find some aspects of the iPad frustrating (what’s wrong with directional arrows???), but it’s so fast and small and portable that I’m willing to live with the downsides. And I think I’ll be forced to figure out the workarounds for the things that bug me once I adopt it full time.</p>
<p>I have no interest in a laptop. I use a desktop at home.</p>
<p>I believe iPad is to desktop/laptop as microwave oven is to full-feature range. Both pairs work very well together. But, neither will put the other out of business.</p>
<p>Faddish products have a strange lifetime. Check Nokia and RIM … Who would predict how quickly they may fall from the mountain top?</p>
<p>Apple is probably the most surprised of all that their mobile products have been so successful. Or perhaps not since the Cupertino boys ooze arrogance. Their current mission is to milk the iPxx fad for as long as it lasts. </p>
<p>I hope you realize how underwhelming the latest updates have been. IP4 and S unveiled nothing revolutionary. Yesterday’s iPad is such a dud that Apple did not even bother naming it.</p>
<p>They will need a really good iPhone 5 and a really new iPad 3 this year.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yup. That’s me. I write, can’t imagine why I’d try to do that on a small screen, a separate keyboard, a way to prop it up, etc. for far more money than my trusty desktop. If and when I do get a laptop, I’ll end up getting a mouse to go with; I have a terminal hate for the touchpad.</p>
<p>Bottom line for me is–I don’t have a lot of money. The longer I make-do with what I have, the less money I spend replacing and experimenting. Whole generations of gadgets pass me by. When I do buy new stuff, it’s after the initial prices have dropped (one reason I don’t buy much Apple–they never get cheaper.) I’m impressed with you all’s ability to have so many different screens–just not doable for us.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s also a given that Apple must have a few more cards to play and will continue to make incremental upgrades. Part of this plan must be based on keeping the competition in a hesitation mode regarding attacking the 9 inch tablet world with vengeance. </p>
<p>Will the next action be in the smaller platform used by Kindle Fire, Playbook, etc or in the ultrabook market. Will the consumer really accept the limitations brought by the Flash “conflict”? Who knows but it is a given the ROW does not simply stand still.</p>
<p>Fwiw, one feature that is useful to the iPad owner who travels around the world is that it is factory unlocked. Anyone who has dealt with the Apple/AT$T (increasing) conspiracy to lock iPhone forever and a day knows how silly and stupid it is to keep their paying customers to use an iPhone with a local carrier when abroad. AT$T will not even accept to unlock an out-of-contract iPhone that has been replaced by a new model. Apple has done everything it possibly could to prevent people to use creative resources to undo the locking of devices, as opposed to sell the devices in an open form as they did with the iPad. They seem to forget that not everybody is a pirate! </p>
<p>And it will only get worse as Apple is really, really trying to get a new microsim format that will remnder the current micro and regular SIM unusable in their next devices. If it were not for the Europeans, this might already have happened.</p>
<p>In the end, will I carry my iPad on my next trip abroad? Yes and I will use as a glorified telephone to accept phone calls routed from my (legally unusable) iPhone to Google Voice and yet another product to make it ring! </p>
<p>How ridiculous is that!</p>
<p>
Maybe that’s because they’re not creating any content ala bluebayou’s post. ;)</p>
<p>Doing pretty well so far. Many do not need word-processing etc. That’s for office.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/07/businessinsiderchart-of-the-day-the.DTL[/url]”>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/07/businessinsiderchart-of-the-day-the.DTL</a></p>
<p>[iPads</a> Are Outselling Desktop PCs, And Are Now Equal To 17% Of The PC Market - Business Insider](<a href=“http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-24/tech/30658335_1_tablet-market-ipad-market-pc-market]iPads”>http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-24/tech/30658335_1_tablet-market-ipad-market-pc-market)</p>
<p>^^</p>
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</p>
<p>By way of comparison? That “journalist” compares all sales to date of the iPad to the 2011 sales of PCs. This does not obliterates the facts that the iPad is and will account for roughly 5,000,000 sales a month, and that the mobile computing market is bigger than ever. </p>
<p>Not much will happen in 2012, but 2013 will be the year of the big battles between all kinds of tablet makers, smartphones in all shapes and form and the response from the Ultrabook cum Windows 8. Tablets at 200 to 300 dollars versus Ultrabooks at 800 to 1000: quite a different landscape for the company that is currently gouging everyone from suppliers to consumers alike.</p>
<p>Love my iPad.</p>
<p>Personally, I much prefer the larger screen estate available on a desktop or one of my 14-16.9" notebooks that I’ve had dumped on me for free. :)</p>
<p>Better for work and play. I also don’t get what’s so bulky about notebooks since 2006. Heck, my mother’s 15" Macbook Pro is downright light…5 pounds…as opposed to the 9.5-12 pound behemoth notebooks with all accessories I used to haul around with my college textbooks/work stuff/lunch in college/early work years. </p>
<p>I can see bulkiness if one’s talking about an older notebook like a '90’s era Toshiba
Satellite/Tecra or a Dell Inspiron from the early '00s. </p>
<p>Can’t see it with most 14.1" and above notebooks produced since 2004-5…especially if they’re corporate models. Have 2 Dell D610s courtesy of a friend whose company dumped them on me as parts…they’re so light that they feel like toys…even though they actually somewhat encased in some sort of metallic frame.</p>
<p>Tablets are a symptom of a number of conditions, and not an answer to specific computing issues. </p>
<p>Look at it this way. The iPod killed off the high end home audio industry (or a good part of it). Why listen at nearly perfect reproduction (SACD or DVD Audio or what not or even my prized LP’s) when you can listen to 128kbps compression 
??</p>
<p>Likewise, why watch TV on a 55" when you can stream to your tablet.</p>
<p>Likewise, why attempt to create anything when you can have an easier time consuming or sharing existing stuff?</p>
<p>I love “my” Ipad (realy, H’s) too, but I don’t get why they get to call it a “tablet”. I have a 7 or so year old Fujitsu stylistic “slate” PC. Now THAT’S a tablet!</p>
<p>I thought about asking for an Ipad, but ultimately I’d rather be able to type easily. A small laptop is much more useful for me. I might feel differently if I didn’t have a smart phone, but I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I play around with my co-worker’s iPad all the time while we’re doing mail. I hate the thing. I don’t like holding it and I can’t stand typing on it OR the external keyboard. We also work on it together. He is blind and beta tests new apps for the blind and I help him with that so I’ve become pretty comfortable with the thing, but still hate it.</p>
<p>I like my netbook, but it can never truly replace my full sized laptop. I don’t see myself getting a tablet of any sort any time soon. I just don’t like them no matter how much I use one. It’s a PITA.</p>
<p>Load WWF on the iPad and you might hate it a bit less. /smile </p>
<p>Actually, I am on the side of the aisle on the iPad. After making a REAL effort to use it more and try to get “why” people like it so much, I have not changed much of my prior conclusions. People who like the iPad do not use it for real work, but for spending time doing other things than … work. It seems to be the perfect antidote to sit through boring corporate presentations and pretend to be active during the day. </p>
<p>But as everything associated with Apple, there will never be watered down KoolAid. The education and graphic artists niche player did stumble onto his acorn. An acorn that has been especially lucrative in an era when productivity has become a four letter word and plenty of people are under-employed. Wasting time seems to be perfect antidote to the last years economic downturn. </p>
<p>Anyway, there darn things are here to stay … until the next fad comes around. Fwiw, we should not applaud the fact that the sales of desktop PCs have fallen, as that is a perfect barometer of how companies are faring and how much new businesses are created. </p>
<p>Oh well!</p>
<p>My iPhone killed the iPad.</p>
<p>Seriously, when I’ve somewhat thought of getting an iPad I’m left wondering what value it’s be above and beyond my iPhone. My iPhone can do everything an iPad can do and more since it can be used as a phone and it can even fit in my pocket. </p>
<p>I’ve used the iPhone for many things people use an iPad for including watching movies on a flight and web browsing. Watching the movies on it is fine but the browsing is obviously not as good due to the size but then I’d only use it in a pinch and if I need to do much then I use my laptop which can do far more than an iPad can do.</p>
<p>I think soon enough here we’ll see a merging of tablets and laptops, i.e. large tablets (the size of a typical laptop screen) with a multitouch display, that can be docked to a traditional keyboard (with optical devices, etc.) where it would charge. In that position, it’s treated like a laptop, but can be detached and used on the go. The challenge so far has been to make a cost-effective display that large, but eventually that won’t be a problem and we’ll have tablet/laptop hybrids as the norm. Perhaps by this time desktops will have died off almost completely.</p>
<p>Desktops won’t die off. Too many people with multimonitor systems out there doing real work.</p>