Thoughts from the iPad Sandbox - Need vs. Want

Being a graduate student in the college of communications allows for wonderful access to the tools of the trade, including video recorders, professional-quality digital cameras, and iPads.

While test driving a few dozen iPads, our class discussed needs versus wants. Did any of us need an iPad in our lives? Why, or why not? We pondered:

• How does the iPad fit into our daily activities?
• How can an iPad enhance a reader's experience of books, magazines, newspapers?
• Where does an iPad provide useful applications in a business setting? Education setting?
  
• How can marketers use this technology to their advantage?
  
• What can an iPad do that a laptop computer can't? What can a laptop do that the iPad does not (yet)? Does an iPad complement a computer or do they cancel each other out?
  
• What does the iPad not do that we wish it did to be more useful?
• Finally, did we really need it? Or is it just for cats?

One thing we found out quickly is that the functionality of the iPad is directly related to costs. Keyboard, camera connection and other adapters sold separately. Many of the applications also have a pricetag.

As the owner of a MacBook, PC laptop, two iPhones, a digital camera, a half dozen iPods of varying capabilities, a Wii and two DVRs, I'm not sure I'm ready to let the iPad into my life just yet until I know for sure that the technology offers something I need vs. want. I recently found two sad, forgotten, irrelevant Palm Pilots and their nifty stylis pens in a corner of the closet. I'm not sure an iPad wouldn't meet their same fate.