My initial impressions are as such:

1. The screen rules.
2. The screen gets incredibly smudged up. I mean like nasty greasy. This is not something I’ve really noticed on my iPhone (as much).
3. It is not a replacement for a laptop or net book.
4. It browses the web like a dream. I don’t even miss flash on this thing.
5. Don’t expect to type with your fingers on the home row.
6. Once your thighs get a little sweaty the iPad sticks to them pretty well. This makes typing while sitting up in bed in your boxers easier (something I just learned).
7. Techie/IT people will think you are stupid for buying one. “normal” people will be jealous. Of course Mac fanatics will already have their own.
8. It won’t live up to the hype.
9. If you don’t like the iPhone you won’t like the iPad (duh).
10. The scrabble app is totally worth the $10 if you have friends with iPhones (review here so you don’t have to take my word for it)
11. Onscreen arrow keys would be good for navigating text boxes (like the one I’m typing in now). I can’t go back to the top of my text because the scrolling doesn’t work in “frames”. I have also had this problem on other sites. Maybe there will be a fix for it?
12. Screenlock is a good feature and wasn’t mentioned enough in prerelease reviews that I read.
13. The iWork apps should’ve come on the thing for free.
14. This keyboard is kind of annoying to type on. Hunt and peckers should be right at home though.

I got the iPad because I’d been considering getting a net book for awhile now. Mostly to browse the Internet and whatnot. The iPad has exactly the functionality I want in a quick to boot, easy to use, no fluff package. All in all I’m happy with my purchase (on day 3, at least).

1. the keyboard is slow -  and this is probably my #1 (or possibly #2, depending on the day) reason i hate this phone.  i don’t type all that fast on this thing and it still cannot keep up with me.  i find myself going back and editing text messages all the time.  it’s pretty fucking annoying.  with something like the iphone i can understand why there is some delay between typing and something showing up on the screen, but at least it doesn’t completely miss characters like the rumor does.  i could deal with a delay, but missing letters and shit is just plain bad.  considering the only reason i got this phone was for the qwerty keyboard it’s a pretty big let down.
2. it turns itself off – this and #1 are probably my two biggest complaints.  i don’t know how many goddamn times i’ve looked at my phone and realized it’s mysteriously powered down.  i’ve seen it do it while just sitting on my desk, so i know that it’s not just getting jammed in my pocket and magically shutting down.
3. the internet is slow – i moved from a samsung a900 (ubiquitous phone that it seemed like every other person had) and that thing loaded anything from the web faster than this POS.  had i realized that the rumor does not have cdma or whatever the sprint version of 3g is called i probably would’ve reconsidered purchasing it.
4. the camera fucking sucks -  see my believeland post to see how fucking terrible the camera is (the word BELIEVELAND should be in orange in that pic.  note: it was taken indoors in good light).  a good portion of my marek pics were also taken on this thing.  the colors are always washed out, and the fucking thing takes a good 5 to 8 seconds to actually take the picture after you hit the button.  that is pretty unacceptable.  yeah i know, it’s a phone not a camera, but my aforementioned samsung (which was like 2 or 3 years old) had a better response time and better looking pictures.   the reason i got rid of that one was the camera died.  i’m not expecting dslr quality shots here, but something that looks better than a pic taken on some camera made in 1998 would be nice.
5. the “locking” system blows – you can slide the thing open and it goes straight to the messaging menu, which is admittedly a nice feature, but a slide of 0.0000001cm will cause it to go to this menu.  in your pocket this can happen pretty easily.  i’ve taken it out of my pocket after a quick walk and found it trying to dial any number of crazy different phone numbers.  it would be nice if the thing didn’t open the messaging menu until the phone was completely slid open.  seems like a pretty easy solution to me.
6. signal strength blows – i live in a brick condo building and i cannot get the phone to work inside anywhere… 2nd floor, near the windows, still doesn’t work.  i almost always have to go outside to use the fucking thing.  meanwhile my girlfriend who has some phone she got in like 1963 can walk around the entire place chatting it up.  also, i get a lot of dropped calls even when i do have full (or near full) strength and i’m outside or in my car.  this never happened on my samsung.

so all in all, i hate this thing.  i’d like to get something else, but i feel like i’m wasting money because i just got this phone a few months ago.   the one thing i will say it does well is battery life.  i can go for 4 or 5 days without having to charge (now i’m by no means a power talker or anything, but it’s pretty good on battery life).

so if you were looking for reasons why this phone sucks, there you go.

first off, some caveats about this whole thing.  for one, you have to keep the google calendar sync application running with outlook open on a pc somewhere.  if you work in any kind of enterprise/corporate environment, you most likely already leave your pc on, logged in (and hopefully LOCKED) at all times.  if you do, this will work great.  if not, you won’t get the full advantage of this little system, but it could still be useful for updating your work calendar on weekends, as it would sync anything new when you started up your pc the next time.  secondly, the google sms features of the calendar are only available to US customers (sorry canada! :P)

so with that said, here’s what you need to do.  first, sign up for a google calendar account at http://calendar.google.com (of course your gmail account will work!)  once you have that, download the google calendar sync app (double check that you have a version of outlook and windows that is supported) and install it.  make sure you set it up for two way updates (so anything you add in either google calendar or outlook will show up in each).

now open up your google calendar account and click the settings link in the upper right corner.  go to the mobile setup tab and enter your phone number and mobile provider.  be aware that by doing this you are going to use text messages, so if you don’t have unlimited texting this could end up costing you A LOT!  once you do that google will send you a special code to put into the verification box.

so now you have your google calendar ready to receive new events via text and it should be syncing to your pc and outlook.

now for the really cool part (IMO)!  you can now text your calendar by sending a message to 48368 (GVENT) and have it either reply to you with your current days events (text message of “day”) or the next days events (“nday”) OR, and this is the best, you can have it add a new event to your calendar by texting it in plain english!  what does that mean exactly?  say, for example, you want to add a new appointment for next tuesday at 3pm with someone.  all you have to do is text GVENT and in the message say “meeting with my mom at 3pm tuesday.”  the system will figure out what you mean and add the event (by default for one hour, but you can go ahead and tell it “meeting with my mom at 3pm tuesday for 2 hours” and it’ll make a 2 hour appointment instead).

i’ve played with this system and it is pretty smart, you can give it dates and times basically any way you want and it will figure it out.  i even had it set a full day appointment by telling it “all day.”  one thing that did not work however was giving it a fraction for the time, so saying “2.5 hours” will really have it make a 5 hour appointment with “2.” as part of the subject.

so there you go, no need to get a fancy windows mobile phone to view/update your exchange calendar! (i’ll still be getting rid of this goddamn piece of crap rumor ASAP tho)