Well I pre-ordered my iPad and I was excited about getting it.  I expected it to be really great, but it very much exceeded my expectations.  It has all the usual “Job’s innovation points” and I expected that, but several of the things just blew me away.

First, to appreciate the device, you must realize it is a “content consumption” device, not a “content creation” device.  If you try and create content on it, you are going to be very frustrated.  When you hold it in your hand, it has the perfect feel of size, weight, and balance.  It is actually a joy to read on, browse the web, etc.

These are the activities I like the best:

• Reading - This one we all knew was going to be good.  The books are very rich with color and pictures.  You can resize the fonts, change the orientation, visually turn the page, and quickly jump to multiple bookmarks. I also love the Bookstore.  Great user experience (much better than the Kindle) and a very good book selection.  The main thing I wish they would have added was a “current place in the book” marker.  You could use bookmarks for this, but that is not what you are really looking for the way they were implemented.
• Browsing the Web - This one surprised me.  I usually read my news on my Mac, using Flock, on a big 30 inch monitor.  I really liked doing it that way, but I must say I like the experience on the iPad far better.  Scrolling by just flicking the page and sizing with a pinch is now a must do requirement of my browsing experience.  It is also extremely fast, probably twice as fast as Flock (which is built on Firefox) and 3-4 times as fast as IE.  It even feels faster than Chrome.
• Email - The email experience is surprisingly good.  The size of the column is landscape mode is just right, the scrolling is awesome, and it has all the cool rendering functionality you get from Mac Mail.  I connects directly with my Exchange Server.  Creating email is pretty challenging, but I have solved that well by getting Dragon Dictate (more on this later in the week).
• Calendar – What can I say, best calendar experience ever.  Gorgeous UI, easy to navigate, displays all my calendars and easily overlays them.  I don’t this it could get better than this.
• Contacts – Again, awesome experience.  Easy to find everyone, great profiles, great data aggregation.  I do wish it had integration with Linked-In and Facebook.

Well, that is enough for now.  Tomorrow I am going to go over several of my favorite Apps and later in the week I am going to review Things for the iPad and Dragon Dictate.