The moment the iPad started gaining a lot of interest and anticipation, in the market (pre-release) was when the term came out. For me, I think it's really nice that a tablet can be so prominent in the market, and that others want to take on that market, too. Apple might be ahead on this, but this is a neat direction for the market to take.
Even my acceptance changed between the first announcement of it, when I got to check it out, and weeks after I bought it. Nowadays, as long as whatever I need, runs on the thing, it's become my main device to use. Don't get me wrong, I love my laptops and I will forever create major content with them, and/or run desktop-specific stuff. But for regular everyday use, my iPad time easily surpasses my laptop. It's the perfect size, and a good weight for me to feel most comfortable using it.
Thing is, the competition knows they don't have much time. Wait a year and they have to play the real tough uphill battle for app support. Windows 7 has one major issue already discussed. Needing more powerful hardware to run the software that already exists, and the idea of how in the world would we translate all these existing apps to a software keyboard and touch controls. It's almost the same issue with flash. So much flash software is hardcoded to use the hardware keyboard in certain addresses and mouse that even if they ran, you can't control them.
