Everyone is going to define productivity differently, different people use computers for different things at different times. I was just describing one way the iPad is a productive device for one person in one situation.

As I said before, every product design/choice is about compromise. My wife could choose to carry around a full size laptop and sure it would be able to do some things better than a netbook/iPad can. But it would come with its own compromises, like being much bigger and heavy for a start. And even then it wouldn't be able to do a bunch of stuff that the iPad can do.

When she gets back to her office she spends most of her time using a desktop PC. But that doesn't diminish the fact that the iPad is extremely productive for her when she is out on the road.



I happily use mine for long emails, forum posts and taking a few pages of notes in meetings, I don't need to write term papers My wife uses it to type up pages and pages of notes when she is travelling.

There is plenty I wouldn't want to type on the iPad, like the majority of my typing, which is code. But then I never claimed that the iPad was a replacement for all my computer related tasks. I still spend most of the day sat in front of a laptop bashing on a physical keyboard.

For me an iPad works in addition to the other computers I use, though there are going to be plenty of people for who the iPad* meets all of their computing needs, including a whole set of people who've never even owned a computer before.

* or even maybe other tablets, if anyone other than Apple ever manages to sell any