I seriously admire a great deal of the design that apple uses, but they must be joking with their latest offering, the IPad, which is effectively a big IPhone, that cannot make phone calls.

It is a little like a netbook, but just without a decent processor, or keyboard, or operating system.
I expect they will release the IBoard later, which will be an ultra thin keyboard you can attach to your IPad to make it even more functional, lol, just stick them together with an IHinge, and you will have an IThink( I think I have been royally conned and ripped off once again by sleek design and massive marketing), but at least I give apple credit for finally offering computers now that have decent processing power thanks to intel, (but not for the IPad, apparently they had a whole warehouse full of their own rubbish processors they still needed to dump) even if you do pay double, or triple, or more, than you would for similiar features elsewhere.

Now we just need to see apple invent "their" version of a mouse with scroll and context menu functionality, and for just a few thousand dollars more they could offer a computer that 'lombards' could be truly proud of.

A lombard you say?
Lots of money, but a real d-------, fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

Yeah, it looks like a bit of a dud to me.
There's a pretty good reason why there's a gap between mobile phones and notebooks, and I can't see that any gap has been filled with the IPad.
If yu can't stick it in yur pocket then you may as well get a laptop with all the bells and whistles.
It might be possible to build a special pocket for the IPad to fit into a jacket or something, and that might be great until you one day forget about it and hear a bank busting crunching sound.
I think that the gap in the market will stay until they can come up with a foldable screen, or some other idea to make an office and entertainment system fit into your pocket.

Well they were trying to do a few things at once, and I guess it's best functions will be as an e-book reader, and a toy.

You are right about screen sizes, the pop it in your pocket functionality of an IPhone is not there.
They can make flexible screens now, which are basically just a sheet of plastic with a couple of wires running to it, so your idea of a fold up, or more likely, roll out, (like a holland blind) portable is probably something we will see sooner or later.

Microsoft and HP jointly announced a similar device a few weeks ago. I think you're being a bit of a neo-Luddite in dismissing this outright.

Tablets like this are expected to become pretty big, and I have been thinking about getting one myself (not the overpriced crippled locked up Apple variety though). There are some very nice little 7in. models that've been around for ages (certainly long before the latest hype anyway) which run Android and Ubuntu. Which have USB ports and HDMI and stuff. Would need to have GPS built in for me though, since it'd be a nice little device to bung on the dashboard.

abu_rashid wrote on Feb 4^th, 2010 at 10:17am:

Tablets like this are expected to become pretty big, and I have been thinking about getting one myself

Off topic, unnecessary comment deleted. edited by Locutius

Oh no, abu_rashid is a good muslim. Doesn't blow people up himself, just spins like a top when another muslim does!

He also bans people from his Forum for asking too many uncomfortable questions. Bit like Aussie in a way.

Poster has a name, use it. Be as forceful as you like within the body of your arguments without being offensive...edited by Locutius

Just to get back on topic, people saying the iPad doesn't have USb amuse me. It is like the initial iMac release "Oh, it doesn't have a floppy disk drive!" Well, neither do PCs now, Who has used a floppy recently???

The iPad is a WiFi device, it networks, doesn't use slow USB! In 5 years the competing pads, long left in the dust, will also stop offering USB.

Ummm the iPad might make manbags popular?

nice to hear it...

I like the device. Sorry they have taken so long to run with this format of technology.

The ability to use it for phone calls could be easily fixed if the demand was there. People carrying a mobile and a laptop are simply going to swap out the laptop for the iPad or something similar.

These or similar are going to be everywhere soon. And as a convenient ebook reader I absolutely love it.