I had the same dilemma year ago. I bought iPad 3 as a Air replace. I use it with BT keyboard, Office2 HD + iWork, some pdf software, clouds software, VGA converter etc.
Mostly I use it for writting (I'am research worker),web browsing, files browsing.
Office2 HD works very well with clouds (like Dropbox).
iPad is very good for simple editing work. It is light to carry with, runs whole day without charging, it needs no time to launch (it's ready to action in no time). If you lose it or somebody stole it : no worry, you can remotely erase it (or thief erase it with wrong pin code
) and have iTunes/iCloud backup which make your new iPad the same like previous one, with all your documents, files.And iPad is unbreakable, pretty solid piece of glass and alu
But...
- You can't have two (or more) documents opened at once,
- using some Excell-like software is pain ( lack of tab key to skip between cells),
- forget heavy text formating or tables, because often it doesn't work if you i.e send your file to anybody with computer,
- the same with footnotes or page numbers etc.,
- you get no advanced options in .docx/.doc files (like change tracking or documents comparing)
- file saving is a bit different (i.e Pages makes autosave) - I prefer saving right to Dropbox,
- fortunatelly, external keyboard lets you to skip by words, select whole words forward and backward, copy-cut-paste, use arrows. BT keyboard is a must.
Conclusion: for me iPad is fantastic tool if I need to read content "in the field" or launch Keynote presentation, but is a more sketchpad to work. Finally I still polish my doc files on my computer before I send it out. I still keep iMac
I don't regret at all, today with all my experience I would buy iPad again.