[dionysiac]

"It's all about expectations with the iPad."

My thoughts exactly. Purely as a reading device, it will be fantastic for scientific papers which are usually in hard formatted PDFs. Reflowing them for a small e-ink device sucks and makes them hard to read. Having color is a huge bonus (10 shades of grey in a color coded graph is a royal pain). The iPad + the GoodReader app will let you take hundreds of papers and technical books with you. The fact that it has a pretty good web browser and email app with WiFi is an awesome bonus.

[kalid]

Agreed. If you come in expecting an all-singing, all-dancing desktop/laptop/server replacement you'll be disappointed.

If you want a device to read PDFs, play some games, and browse the web it's fantastic.

iPad + GoodReader + 10 hour battery life is bliss.