My Ipad continues to see heavy usage every day in my line as an elementary school teacher. I haven't touched my school-issued laptop at all save for moments when I really need a computer (keying in marks into intranet, accessing govt websites that run only in IE etc).
Some observations from my experience:
1) I find I don't really need ms office. Most of the time, the iworks suite for ios does the job just fine, though I stress first that I am normally just typing documents to keep on my ipad for reference, and these rarely get circulated around via email and the like.
For instance, I may use numbers to generate checklists to keep track of homework submissions, or to showcase math concepts like graphs. Pages for typing documents on screen (I can upload/email in pdf format to my pupils if need be), and keynote for quick presentations or showcasing math bar models.
Lack of features? I don't use over 95% of them anyways.
Occasionally, it does suck to receive a document which does not open properly in iWork's, and it is troublesome to request colleagues to prepare a separate pdf copy just for me. I suppose I could try out quickoffice, but I don't really need it that much yet to justify the hefty price tag.
2) When I am walking around the classroom with an ipad in hand (and mirroring to the IWB via ATV), the lack of a physical keyboard is actually a boon. I can still type quite comfortably using the split keyboard, and it more than suffices for short sentences and phrases.
3) Multi-touch gestures like pinch to zoom are much more user-friendly than ctrl+/-.
4) Apps like educreations, goodreader, safari, iworks and a myriad of education-themed apps run very smoothly on the ipad. I don't see a need for more muscle at the moment. Better than admin-locked laptops that can't install 3rd party software.
I hope Apple doesn't change the form factor ever!
