Someone needs to do a case for the iPad that doubles as a physical keyboard of the sort that Apple is selling with that wedge thing that props up your iPad. Along with the forthcoming multitasking in OS 4.0, we might have something useful after that. But until then, unless your job consists of surfing the web and tweeting into the giant collective miasma of the link-passing masses, this is a device is best used to round out the fast growing collection of screens in your home.

Or at least that was my impression after a week of taking the machine with me everywhere where I would have previously brought a laptop, concluding in a couple of nights away without access to my trusty old clamshell. Lacking the option to escape to the laptop was the doozie, especially when I felt myself in need of editing a complex text file and discovered that without soft arrow keys you are reduced to being an angry pointing monkey, poking a finely tuned glass screen that shows your stubby homo sapien fingers little love and much smudge.

And to boot, if you have any semi-complex task that requires the use of any two applications concurrently, say something as simple as looking up instructions on a task and typing commands in, the "instant-on" claims quickly melt in the face of frustration every 4-5 second pause required to close one context and open the next.

As I gnashed my teeth trying to sort through these early challenges last night (while rushing to try to get something actually done), I realized that perhaps the worst feature in the iPad is the unrealistically high expectations that Apple and the rest of the world have set on the machine as the "next revolution" in personal computing. Much like I would never complain about the lack of control and missing features when paying $200 for a small point-and-shoot instead of $1000 for a DSLR, I think that properly evaluated in context— as a fancy peripheral for leaving the laptop out of the living room especially when there are others around— it will be an absolute monster hit. Laptop replacement? Not for geeks and not even for "normals," at least not for a while yet.

One final thought: showing the consistency of a two-year old, the TSA doesn't bat an eyelash when you leave the iPad inside the bag while clearing security. This is a monster bonus for the frequent travelers— however, I can only imagine that it is an ephemeral benefit at best (it can not be that our crack team of airport security geniuses are that fickle).

Somewhat related: Nick Carr has the best analysis of why the collective online consciousness is so up in arms about the question of whether the iPad is going to hijack computing as we know it.