It has arrived. Does it live up to the hype? I’ve now been using mine for a full day and the following (written from it in hardly longer than it’d take using a real computer) are my thoughts: <br/><br/><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Pros</span> <br/><ol><li>Netflix streaming is awesome. </li><li>It is great for quickly checking email. <br/></li><li>It is great for quickly checking on the latest news. <br/></li><li>Browsing the web is cake and fast. <br/></li><li>The addition of more dock icons (over the phone) is huge. <br/></li><li>The screen is beautiful. <br/></li><li>I can type just about as quickly as on a regular keyboard. <br/></li><li>It came with a free book. I was going to purchase something to test it out, but they went ahead and made that easier for me. So what if it’s “Winnie the Pooh?” </li><li>It’ll be a really cool photo frame when “resting” at home.<br/></li><li>It runs all of my existing iPhone apps. <br/></li></ol><span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Cons</span> <br/><ol><li>It doesn’t charge via most USB ports, but charges with a USB cable so clearly the idea was there. I can understand the argument that it’s a large device, but why didn’t we hear about this earlier if they weren’t trying to hide it? What’s the point f even using  USB cable if it needs a wall adapter?<br/></li><li>No multitasking is for the birds. I made notes for this post continuously over the past day, but I have to close Safari, open Notes, try to remember a handful of items, close Notes, reopen Safari, and finally write. <br/></li><li>No Flash support. I get it, because enabling Flash would take a serious chunk of cash out of the gaming market, but not having it on news or video sites is a pain. <br/></li><li>Most of the apps I have [from my phone] work, but are really only usable when I enable pixel doubling. Games, in particular, look like crap like that. I figured most developers would either heavily discount purchases from people owning iPhone versions or just update the SKU to support both the phone and the pad, but they have not done that. Instead, they’ve made new SKUs and are charging an arm and a leg for what amounts to a <span style=”font-style: italic;”>very</span> simple conversion to “HD.” My guess is this will only be an intro thing until the hype cools off. Then we may see those free updates and/or discounts and/or reasonable prices. Znother argument is that many developers added significant functionality to their apps; justifying a new product. Great, that’s fine, but still take the time to do a quick update for your loyal phone customers. OmniFocus, which is just text and icons, is my biggest pain here (it’s $19.99). <br/></li><li>As I’m on vacation this weekend, I had my device shipped to North Carolina. Unfortunately, not until Friday, were buyers informed that accessories (docking station, and a case) were not arriving on ship day. No, the device comes with no accessories; everyone is without a case. Now I’ve got to deal with having my accessories shipped up to me once they arrive down here. Or maybe purchase them at a store and return the ones I ordered, when they arrive.<br/></li><li>It’s a little bit awkward and heavy. I think I’d get fatigued trying to hold it up like a book, but it doesn’t rest all too nicely anywhere. Typing? Better have it lying down or you’re going to be taking some serious time. <br/></li><li>Some of the apps are jokes. Time has the audacity to charge $4.99 per issue. I fully expect them to not sell many at all and eventually find the $.99 magic price point. The WSJ apps says it has a trial mode. Yeah, if you don’t mind ads severely limiting anything you can do. That got a quick delete. <br/></li><li>The Mail app was a bit finicky with my Exchange server, Netflix crashed when I loaded a movie and flipped the device around, but otherwise, things have been pretty solid. </li><li>[From laptop] Apparently it doesn’t hold any formatting when using the WYSIWYG editor on my site. Had to run back through, format it all, and correct only a single spelling mistake.<br/></li></ol>I have yet to go anywhere without wireless access so it’ll be interesting to see how useful it is then. My guess is not at all unless I buy movies [or rip them from DVDs and load them] or something, which I likely will end up doing. Eventually, I’d assume some apps would get some sort of caching feature; visiting a site in Safari, downloading most of it to the device, and then reading it when in transit or something would be very cool. <br/><br/>Will I keep it? I don’t know, but probably. It’s just kind of neat. Do I need it? Absolutely not.