The new iPad is truly a cool device - it's sleek, it has a beautiful screen, and it's price isn't too bad all things considered (I paid $299 for my iPhone 3G and got saddled with a two-year contract - don't even get me started with that whole rap...).

Here's what I love about the iPad: 

• it's only 13.4 mm thick - compared to the iPhone, it's only 1.1mm thicker
• big multitouch display @ 9.7"
• VoiceOver screen reader - this is something I'd really LOVE to have on my iPhone, I use it all the time on my Mac.  Select text and have the computer read it to you... awesome.
• screen resolution of 1024x768 - my first computer might have been 640x480 and it was only 4.77Mhz!
• the whole accelerometer thing - you can flip it in any direction and it'll right itself - there's no right or wrong way to hold the thing.  I also thought it was pretty cool that if you flip it over to show someone, it automatically changes orientation.
• entry level iPad is $499

Here's what I hate about:

• closed platform... AGAIN.  I understand there's 140,000 apps out there, big frickin' whip - I don't need 1,000 apps that do basically the same thing just a little bit differently.   I NEED Photoshop/Bridge, Lightroom, iTunes, Safari (and Firefox),  iCal, and, I hate to even say it MS Office.  I caught some flack about this on Facebook today, but I don't need to have iWork forced on me NOR do I need another App to do what Word, Excel and Powerpoint already do.  Plus, I've used them forever, let's face it MS built a pretty good mousetrap (not the best, but a good one).
• USB 2.0 - WHY OH WHY CAN'T IS MAC USERS GET AN IPHONE, IPOD, OR IPAD WITH A FIREWIRE OPTION????  I really can't stand the fact that Apple dropped Firewire support in their devices USB is SO MUCH SLOWER.  Last time I tried to load up my 16GB iPhone with a bunch of videos it took forever.  This is just stupid.  Why sell me a iMac with FW800 ports if you're not going to sell me any devices that support that?
• No SD Card slot?  Did I miss that somewhere or does this NOT have a SD Card slot?  I can understand not having a CF Card Slot, well, actually, I can't.  Why the heck doesn't this device have some kind of combo-card reader built into it?
• No Camera!  Not that I want a giant camera, but what would be really cool is if I could use video iChat.  I've been doing a lot of that lately for work and it's particularly useful to do screen sharing.  But, my next thing I'm not-so-excited about kind of addresses that.
• NO MULTI-TASKING - if there's one thing I miss about my old T-Mobile Dash, it was the ability to run multiple apps at the same time i.e. multitasking.  Granted it wasn't the best platform for the job (Windows Mobile 5), but at least I could have a document open and switch to a browser and cut/paste between them with relative ease - that is until the phone crashed and I had to pull the battery out of it.  So video/screen sharing is kind of out because there wouldn't be anything to screen share, and I guess moving between the web, email and some kind of word processor and/or spreadsheet is out too, or at the very least CUMBERSOME.

There's a few other gripes that I tend to agree with that are posted out on the web that I won't rehash, you can search the web and find them yourself.  I can say that if (and when) this device takes off, the forthcoming revisions of this device will be awe-inspiring.   

One thing I wonder: how hot will this thing get?  Hopefully, not as hot as my MacBook Pro!  If it does, you'll not only be able to read the morning news, but cook it as well!

Another thing I wonder: how long before the iPad kills off the Kindle or any other "readers" out there?