Is Apple’s iPad a Bargain or a Bust?

Apple announced its "latest creation," the long awaited iPad, on Wednesday, Jan. 27. Anticipation over the product had been growing for months, but does the iPad really do anything different than Apple's existing products? Starting at $499, is it a bargain or a bust?
Apple's iPad is a cross between a laptop and an iPhone or iPod Touch.
The large display on the iPad and its revolutionary touch screen technology make the iPad much more versatile than the iPhone, but as a workstation, it can't match a laptop.
When Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, announced the iPad, he said that Apple wanted to make a device that is "far better at a few key things." So what are the "few key things" that the iPad does better than a laptop and an iPhone? 
The answer, according to Jobs, is browsing the Web, e-mail, photos, gaming and e-books.
When it comes to browsing the Web on the go, it is hard to beat a laptop, but in my opinion, the iPad does just that. The device allows the user to manipulate Web pages with their fingers and view them on a beautiful 9.7 inch display, all on a more portable platform than a laptop. 
 The same goes for reading e-mail, but when it comes to composing new messages, an "almost life-size" on-screen keyboard can't compete with a Macbook's keyboard and trackpad. As for photos, the iPad works fine for viewing photos, but if you plan on having a large number of photos or editing them, the storage and advanced software of a laptop works much better. 
Gaming is one area where the iPad is much better than either the iPhone or laptop. It brings a hands-on interface with a large display that can't be matched by any other product. 
E-books are another thing that make the iPad special. Apple developed the new iBooks application specifically for the iPad.
iBooks allows the user to buy and instantly download e-books from the iBooks Store, just like buying and downloading music from the iTunes Store. iBooks' biggest competition is the Kindle, a product made by Amazon exclusively for book reading. The Kindle is cheaper at around $299.
However, the iPad is much better than a Kindle when it comes to the quality of the display and touch screen technology. Although iBooks on the iPad may be a revolution over previous e-book readers, the old fashioned paper book is still much more enjoyable in my opinion.
Although Apple may have failed to create a product that is much better in general than hardcopy books, on college campuses the iPad may make life much easier, because in addition to fiction novels, the iBooks Store will also carry textbooks.
With a textbook purchased from the iBooks Store, the iPad user will be able to just tap on the section in the table of contents and instantly fly to the appropriate page. 
 Although Apple has yet to say anything about the price of the textbooks, experts speculate that they will cost between $9.99 and $29.99, a definite bargain over $100 or $200 hardcopy prices.
And you can have all your textbooks in a half-inch thick device that only weighs 1.5 pounds. That is a far cry from the weight of four or five textbooks on your back.
The iPad is a great tool for students. The amazing iWorks application (Apple's equivalent to Microsoft Office) for the iPad makes taking notes almost as easy as on a laptop—and creating spreadsheets or Keynote presentations is even easier than on a laptop.
The iPad is being released in two models with various storage capacities. The Wi-Fi only model ships in late March and starts at $499 for 16 GB. An iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G wireless Internet provided by AT&T, starts at $629 and will be released in April.
Even if the iPad does not seem to live up to the expectations of many, it is a great device.
Jobs called the iPad "our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price." Maybe that's precisely the iPad's problem.
It might be so advanced and so revolutionary that people don't know how useful it can be yet.  When Apple released the iPhone nobody knew how much they "needed it," but now 75 million people use one everyday.
When the iPad hits store shelves in late March is it destined to have the same impact? Maybe. We will have to wait and see.