Just register to respond to one of these threads, as an Internet denizen of many other forums I know ophow aggravating it can be for people to not use search, but at the same time I know what its like to be on the fence about buying something and hoping that someone out there can give you that extranpush to convince you to get it. The op sounds like one of those people trying to convince themselves They can wait, unfortunately op, I'm not going ton make that task to easy 
. This will be long, so any tl;dr don't bother lol.
As a windows user and apple hater for over a decade, I've got a pretty unique perspective on the iPad. I was in the camp that laughed raucously at the name, participated innp the tampon jokes, laughed at the Jesus phone, refused to buy a Mac, etc. I've even used the " macs cant run everything" adage despite knowing that's not really true anymore just to silence Mac children. So you know the history I have with apple.
I first decided to buy an iPad when flying back from la to ny on a break from university on a break. I left my headphones, and wasn't flying virgin America (which I highly recommend if you'd like to feel like a BOSS despite your cabin class) so I couldn't purchase any, and my Dell 14Z batty was going to die by my connecting flight. The lady next to me pulls out an iPad and starts going on and on about it to the lady next to her, who also has an iPad.
"typical apple tards," I haughtily thought.
Over the next four hours on that plane they roundly shut me up. From Scrabble, to reading books, to streaming tv and using the Internet, everything was just seamless. And they didn't have to worry about their battery level or positioning their laptop comfortably on a small airline table, everything just worked, well.
My next ride I sat down, and the lady next to me proceeds to pull her iPad out. Finally I cave and ask her what she thinks about. She, like me, had held a seething hatred from the depths of her soul for apple for quite sometime until she brought an iPad. Her passion would have inspired me to hit on her if she wasn't old and not my type tbh. Despite this, she too said she was overly impressed with the experience and ui.
Fast forward two weeks later, i sell my laptop and pick up a 16g wifi, my phone can tether unlimitedly thanks to winmo+ sprint ( I told you I was old school despite being such a young brotha), so I didn't need a 3G. All together paid abiut 50 bucks fir my iPad and also bought a net book thinking I would need it. Jailbroken it immediately for multitasking, and virtual memory cache as well as wifi fixes (as an early adopter of technology, I'm used to a litany of problems, these small issues were nothing coming from the windows world. You appleites are spoiled if you think needing to edit a quick file for VM is hard work), and thought i would only use it occasionally.
How wrong i was. The iPad is integrated into every aspect of my life, so much so that i also sold my netbook and just use my desktop and wheni fly home and this summer have rarely used my roommates extra netbook for loading up some music occasionally. The lack of flash is hardly noticed, as I only use it to stream videos onto the tv, and we have a laptop with a broken monitor connected to our living room tv for that, and I haven't missed my laptop once.
A typical day involves goodnight clock waking me up in the morning, followed by me checking my emails, hitting up pulse ferny news and now checking out flipboard to see what's going on in my social world, see if anyone has gotten anything going on. If I'm going to the gym Ill check maxjournal or my notes if I can't remember what weights/ reps I did last time so that I'm on track there, when i get back I may tune into Wunderradio and listen to some hot 97.1 from back on the east coast since this Los Angeles radio out here has never been good to me(im originally from the right coast living out here in this strange land cOles California), while I get showered and ready for work.
Throughout work my iPad is at my side, playing music or streaming the radio, pulse and flipboard constantly keeping me and my coworkers entertained with stories and media to pass time while we work, I can read news on breaks, cruise upstairs to the break room balcony and relax while listening to some tunes, etc., all while tethered to my touch pro 2. On the way back from work it's streaming more east coast radio or my own tunes to my car so I don't have to listen to "Damn you a sexy bitch" again.
I get home, it's still got at least 20% battery left after being on since 6 am and tethered all day, and I may hit up bigovenpro to make a new meal for myself, just last week I learned how to make some delicious chili for me and some friends through bigoven. After that, who knows what the night may bring.
The iPad really is a crazy piece of hardware, and i wrote all that as my first post on my iPad hoping that this would make your decision much harder. For many people it won't be a netbook or laptop replacement, but having a desktop ( I'll have another soon) or access to a net book periodically for some people may be enough. I see many people being satisfied with their iMac, or windows 7 desktop and an iPad because honestly I used to be a pretty hard power user of computers short of coding or designing things, and I don't miss my laptop at all. I'm even considering ditching my roommates netbook as well for this semester and just picking up the bluetooth keyboard for this thing off crags list (I will not give apple 70 dollars for a keyboard) and using this. I've got apps like papers and things that would make school a breeze, annotating my IR papers would be much easier.
Anyway, wrote a lot, hope it helps, later all.
Edit: forgive any typos too, some of this was typed without looking at the screen, I've been getting better at that and tryna practice it whenever i can.
. This will be long, so any tl;dr don't bother lol.As a windows user and apple hater for over a decade, I've got a pretty unique perspective on the iPad. I was in the camp that laughed raucously at the name, participated innp the tampon jokes, laughed at the Jesus phone, refused to buy a Mac, etc. I've even used the " macs cant run everything" adage despite knowing that's not really true anymore just to silence Mac children. So you know the history I have with apple.
I first decided to buy an iPad when flying back from la to ny on a break from university on a break. I left my headphones, and wasn't flying virgin America (which I highly recommend if you'd like to feel like a BOSS despite your cabin class) so I couldn't purchase any, and my Dell 14Z batty was going to die by my connecting flight. The lady next to me pulls out an iPad and starts going on and on about it to the lady next to her, who also has an iPad.
"typical apple tards," I haughtily thought.
Over the next four hours on that plane they roundly shut me up. From Scrabble, to reading books, to streaming tv and using the Internet, everything was just seamless. And they didn't have to worry about their battery level or positioning their laptop comfortably on a small airline table, everything just worked, well.
My next ride I sat down, and the lady next to me proceeds to pull her iPad out. Finally I cave and ask her what she thinks about. She, like me, had held a seething hatred from the depths of her soul for apple for quite sometime until she brought an iPad. Her passion would have inspired me to hit on her if she wasn't old and not my type tbh. Despite this, she too said she was overly impressed with the experience and ui.
Fast forward two weeks later, i sell my laptop and pick up a 16g wifi, my phone can tether unlimitedly thanks to winmo+ sprint ( I told you I was old school despite being such a young brotha), so I didn't need a 3G. All together paid abiut 50 bucks fir my iPad and also bought a net book thinking I would need it. Jailbroken it immediately for multitasking, and virtual memory cache as well as wifi fixes (as an early adopter of technology, I'm used to a litany of problems, these small issues were nothing coming from the windows world. You appleites are spoiled if you think needing to edit a quick file for VM is hard work
), and thought i would only use it occasionally.How wrong i was. The iPad is integrated into every aspect of my life, so much so that i also sold my netbook and just use my desktop and wheni fly home and this summer have rarely used my roommates extra netbook for loading up some music occasionally. The lack of flash is hardly noticed, as I only use it to stream videos onto the tv, and we have a laptop with a broken monitor connected to our living room tv for that, and I haven't missed my laptop once.
A typical day involves goodnight clock waking me up in the morning, followed by me checking my emails, hitting up pulse ferny news and now checking out flipboard to see what's going on in my social world, see if anyone has gotten anything going on. If I'm going to the gym Ill check maxjournal or my notes if I can't remember what weights/ reps I did last time so that I'm on track there, when i get back I may tune into Wunderradio and listen to some hot 97.1 from back on the east coast since this Los Angeles radio out here has never been good to me(im originally from the right coast living out here in this strange land cOles California), while I get showered and ready for work.
Throughout work my iPad is at my side, playing music or streaming the radio, pulse and flipboard constantly keeping me and my coworkers entertained with stories and media to pass time while we work, I can read news on breaks, cruise upstairs to the break room balcony and relax while listening to some tunes, etc., all while tethered to my touch pro 2. On the way back from work it's streaming more east coast radio or my own tunes to my car so I don't have to listen to "Damn you a sexy bitch" again.
I get home, it's still got at least 20% battery left after being on since 6 am and tethered all day, and I may hit up bigovenpro to make a new meal for myself, just last week I learned how to make some delicious chili for me and some friends through bigoven. After that, who knows what the night may bring.
The iPad really is a crazy piece of hardware, and i wrote all that as my first post on my iPad hoping that this would make your decision much harder. For many people it won't be a netbook or laptop replacement, but having a desktop ( I'll have another soon) or access to a net book periodically for some people may be enough. I see many people being satisfied with their iMac, or windows 7 desktop and an iPad because honestly I used to be a pretty hard power user of computers short of coding or designing things, and I don't miss my laptop at all. I'm even considering ditching my roommates netbook as well for this semester and just picking up the bluetooth keyboard for this thing off crags list (I will not give apple 70 dollars for a keyboard) and using this. I've got apps like papers and things that would make school a breeze, annotating my IR papers would be much easier.
Anyway, wrote a lot, hope it helps, later all.
Edit: forgive any typos too, some of this was typed without looking at the screen, I've been getting better at that and tryna practice it whenever i can.
