Technically, the vast majority of consumer products these days "sleep" rather than shutting off. The PSP, iPad, iPhone, most other phones, most tablets, etc... You have to jump through some pretty hefty hoops to get them to completely power down completely. The PalmOS palmtops were the first ones that I used that followed this paradigm. What windows and windows laptops need to focus on is reducing battery usage when they're asleep, and waking up faster. This is tough with all of the legacy hardware that has to be completely shutoff and then reinitialized when it's powered back on. Achieving instant on will be something that will involve replacing most of the components of the system with ones that are designed to keep their state while using very little power. With newer devices this is easier because you're pulling all new components together from a pool of components designed to do exactly that. It's going to take hardware manufacturers to meet that goal, not merely software makers like Microsoft and the various Linux packagers.

I thought that the WiFi was included in the base model? It's the Wireless telecom version that is expensive.

That said, I certainly hope other manufacturers push out products in that form factor with the similar speed features. The market will be better if there is competition, and that form factor is one I've been wanting ever since I started using the PSP.

How is the iPad a threat to Windows since 50% of the people who have one use Windows on it?

My wife and I are both nursing students, we recently each bought an Ipod Touch after seeing the number of other nurses/students/medical professionals with them or similar devices.  The amount of medical applications (professional drug reference book, disease references, lab values etc) on it is amazing.  It's really nice not having to carry around bulky books when the exact same thing (with a nice search feature!) is in your pocket, ready to go in an instant! 

I didn't know you can run Windows on an iPad. Intereesting.

cough..bullshit..cough

where did u get that stat?

Maybe its 50% throws it out of a window! 

YES YES YES, i totally agree! thats what id be doing for sure.......

frogboy: i reckon tap into this app market and make it for useable for pc's too, not everyone has ipods... i know i dont, actually they kinda scare me!  There has to be something out of that market we can turn into profit for stardock....

just though of a good question: with these apps does apple contain sole rights, like for example could another company offer apps? or is it just apple?

No one can sells apps to the iPad except through the App Store.

The overwhelming majority of apps are from 3rd parties.

I am quite happy with my Samsung Omnia II smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.5 this thing does all i want it to do and then some, and it fits in my pocket, if i want larger or faster i use my laptop or my desktop. Thats why i couldnt justify spending the money on an IPad, even though i could afford it and i adore gadgets it didnt fit in my gadget list. And the best part of my phone is it retails for 519.00 and i got it free, my contract was up with Verizon, i picked out the phone online (much cheaper than the stores) and it cost me NOTHING doesnt get any better than that

Yes, much better!  Too small for my liking, but clearly far more useful than an iPad.  Thanks for pointing this out!  

Agreed.  It isn't a threat to anything except iPod Touches.  I use an iPod Touch as my car media player.  

Since the iPad is still too small for web browsing, has no professional applications for working in the fields I work in, and is missing key features that would make is useful as a videophone, etc. etc., I can see only one use for me...watching movies on an airplane.  And I don't fly that often.  

From Apple's own reports of what host computer's OS is used with the iPad...

I think the poster's wording should have been "use Windows WITH it" to be more precise.

I do.  And so did Steve Jobs.  Without violating my NDA, I can say for certain that the current incarnation of the iPad is NOT what Steve originally was shooting for in his long term plans.  His dream certainly WASN'T a big iPod Touch...

But as people have mentioned, battery life for a full OS is the current issue, along with OLED displays not ready for primetime at this size/price point.

He quite possibly did, but maybe realized it wasn't what the market needed.  There are plenty of full-fledged tablet PC's out there, the reason they don't get attention is because nobody really wants them.

http://www.dell.com/tablet?s=biz&cs=555

You're not the target market.

http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2010/05/what-ipads-did-to-my-family.html

For content consumers and for those doing mostly consumption type activities on social networks, this will be perfect for them.

I'm still waiting for HP to release a slate-style device with WebOS.

For a device that no one wants all major players have at least one model in their brands. They are a niche gadget right now, but they are very good at what they are aimed. I have a HP tx2500z and I use it for meetings, conferences, and brainstorming and it is really good at that.

Of course, other people use a normal laptop and normal paper for those things

Most consuming operations require you to produce: chat, answer, comment,... Those things are a pain on a device without a keyboard. Also, there's content that can't be consumed right now on an iPad (a vicepresident of Google pointed that pretty clearly today at Google IO talking about his young child browsing websites of cartoons that use a lot of flash :p).

And most of that is done in the twitter style of writing, less than 140 characters, brief answers, etc. Those brief answers are perfectly fine on an on-screen keyboard.

As for flash, I'm partially in agreement there. I'd rather have a small slate made by someone else than one made by Apple and be fully featured. Android? Maybe. I think I'd prefer something with either WebOS or Ubuntu for ARM.

Chatting is a pain without a keyboard even at twitter style.

The only reason people want the ipad instead of the other tablets is marketing.Most non tech people havent even seen a tablet before the ipad. When is the last time you have seen a commercial for the archos 9 on tv? Oh yeah never. Steve jobs made sure every news outlet was talking about it a least a few times a day saying how cool it would be before it got released.  I live how bought out our media is.  And how much people are suckers for the advertising.

If I want to chat I'll go home and log on. There are too many things to do in the world.

I am not their target market.