I find it amazing that people are comparing this product to netbooks, phones and computers. First you can't have an iPad without a computer. Second, netbooks are cheap (and you get what you pay for), netbooks have the highest dissatisfaction marks in portable machines, primarily because they are under powered, slow and run a full blown OS which is optimized for the hardware.. Apple has wisely, utilized an existing infrastructure and OS to make their iPads work. Finally a company created an OS to work specifically on the device, they ran on iPhones for years, then tweaked it for the iPad. I hate to say it, but it is smart. As I predicted people who consume media will love this device, 90 percent of us consume content.
The device isn't perfect, but Apple delivers an product that will bring back many industries (Comic Books for example). So call it a giant iPod or iPhone, Apple just sold 700k of them in day! I will pick up a 3G for travel, surfing and book reading. As long as you have a purpose for it, you won't be disappointed. People who expect to use them as a computer replacement will be disappointed (you need a computer and itunes to make it work). Thus it should be compared to netbook or anything else, it is it's own thing.