After reading much of this thread's replies, I can honestly say that MANY MR users are living in 2009. The tablet is a PC. Yeah, maybe it can't do 100% of what a MacPro can do, but it does 90% of it. You can use the iPad as a PC and do lots of productivity.
Sure, I wish it was a stronger machine, but it does word processing, it connects to the internet in different ways, it plays video, it plays music, it stores things, it can share things, it can compute, it is personal, it can do spread sheets, it can make movies, it can take photos, it can play games, it can do lots and lots and lots. Why wouldn't it be a PC? Because it doesn't render CGI films? Hell, it's close to having Photoshop already. Sure, it's no iMac, but an iMac is no MacPro.
If you aren't calling it a PC in 2011, you will in 2012 or 2013. Get used to it now, Technosaurus Rex'ers.
It would help the iPad, in the manner you are describing it, if, like an Android/Honeycomb tablet it was a machine in it's own right.
If you look at the way it works, and the way Apple have designed the OS, it's obvious that Apple do not see the iPad as an independent PC, and that Apple themselves see it, and have designed it to be just an extension of your "Real" personal computer.
We are having to rely on 3th party apps to get around Apple's official built in limitations for the device, It's linked totally to just one computer running iTunes, you can't even connect it to say your PC, your friends, PC and your works PC to upload and download data to and from the various machines.
The iPad, as designed, with Apples official software is made so that you set thing up and organise things on your PC or Mac, then you dock your iPad (your mobile extension of your PC) you do a few things, then you come back, re-dock the iPad and it get's backed up.
That's the device that Apple made and how they see it.
It's not the iPad's fault. It's how Apple have made it.
The fact that with some 3rd party apps you can extend it's functionality beyond how Apple see the device is neither here nor there.
Personally, I very VERY much hope Apple do allow the iPad to grow into a fully independent device and break it's lock down link to iTunes.
Unfortunately, seeing as the iTunes link is Apple's money making link, I cannot see them allowing this to happen for a long time, meaning it will never grow to it's full potential as a fully independent device.