I used a convertible tablet PC for several years in Tacoma. I was able to use it not only for keeping track of notes in meetings, email, and my calendar, but I also used it instead of a whiteboard to present material in class which I could then post on my web site for students to view. The iPad as I understand it would not have increased my productivity the way that tablet PC did. My experience with a tablet as a professional convinced me to buy one for myself which I now use for taking notes in class as well as for general computing.

I understand that Apple was not trying to create a tablet PC in the sense that I am used to them, but personally, I would have been much more interested if they came out with something that ran even a scaled-down version of Mac OS X or, at the very least, was capable of multitasking. I also believe something like that would be better suited for some of the uses you point out. Why haven’t tablet PCs already filled those niches then? One thing: marketing. Too many people have never heard of tablet PCs before and think the iPad is the first “tablet”. (One industry got the message, though: book publisher representatives all walk around campuses these days with a tablet computer.)