In my understanding, apple is going for a significant market in aftermarket lock-in, meaning that even if you got the ipad for cheap, it would still be an expensive product to own because you would have to pay for just about anything worth doing with it. The current prices are absolutely ridiculous. The shear amount of raw computer power that can be had for the same price as even a low end ipad is just staggering, and you don't have to sacrifice USB (or anything else that makes computers great tools). And apple likes to make things unupgradable...so you have to get a whole new one when the time comes that it's too old to be useful. If you had spent the same money on a decent desktop, you would likely need to spend much less to upgrade a few key pieces, and not need to buy a whole new one.