iPad? uPad?

The question is, will I get an iPad?

Do I want one? Yes. Will I get one? Maybe. I absolutely refuse to get into the stupid details, like the aspect ratio; I'll give you a much abbreviate, and (I believe) different perspectives on the pros and cons of the iPad.

Pros:
- Verified apps

Cons:
- Separate data plan, even if you have an iPhone

In some ways, this is the perfect tool for the academic computer scientist traveler (i.e., me). I go to conferences and meetings with sponsors, collaborators, etc. I don't want to travel with enough power to do my work, as that requires a lot of disk space, memory, and processor. I need connectivity and ssh and a long battery life. The ability to edit documents locally is useful, too; I don't know that I want or need Word, but we do a lot of our writing in LaTeX, so just the ability to read, edit, and comment on PDFs is probably sufficient.

However, the one problem is that I like to work while I'm on an airplane. I actually think it's conducive to decent programming. My friend at Apple said, "it's a good thing that most planes have wireless." Huh? I travel a fair bit, and have never been on a plane with wireless. (NB: I use the wrong airlines.) I can pay for access, but it would need to be decent. I don't just want to browse the web. Actually, what I want to do is very, very low-bandwidth (programming, etc., on remote servers). I would need my organization's VPN to work, too.

So if I'm on a plane, I can't really get any work done with the iPad, except maybe reading and editing papers. Right now, that's not sufficient.

Once I get to the conference, it would be ideal for taking notes, keeping up with email, etc., so perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.