I bought an iPad when they first came out, and love it. For a lot of the things I was doing on my laptop (surfing the net, e-mail, etc.) the iPad is nicer to use - weighs much less, the battery lasts waaaaay longer than the laptop battery, just a joy to use. I've watched movies on it, I have a bunch of books on it via the iBooks and Kindle apps (and there are over 30,000 public domain free books available on iBooks) and have some great apps. If you follow the stock market, CNBC just came out with a free app for the iPad that is phenomenal! Real-time quotes, too. Check out the app store - there are a ton of free and dirt cheap apps to use on it.
Oh, and it's great for photos!
Oh, and it's great for photos!