ios 5 will be great on the ipad3 this Oct/Nov. The ipad2 is basically a way for apple to keep the pressure on the new tablets.
Apple customers are like lemmings that follow every new product and buy them (me included). I got the new ipad and I will get version 3 this fall.
There won't be an iPad 3 in the fall. Sorry, there won't and anyone that thinks otherwise is not in touch with reality.
THINK for a moment, Apple just launched a new iPad with an entirely redesigned form factor, a brand new processor (which will be in the iPod Touch range in the Fall) and a range of other tweaks. They're not going to launch an entirely new unit six months later, it'd be a huge waste of resources for them and, frankly, they won't need to. We saw with the iPad 1 that the 'people need something new to buy for christmas' line didn't really apply. There isn't a massive step on either the CPU or GPU families due before September either as far as I know whereas there would be by this time next year.
Now what you may see is an iPad 2 HD. But, frankly, that'd be the daftest purchase decision you could make. Why? Because the best you're going to get is a higher res screen and maybe, MAYBE, an improved graphics card, both of which would end up rolled into the iPad 3 in 2012 along with an improved spec sheet to support it at a considerably lower price. Frankly I'd be surprised if Apple even did that and at this point would expect the iPad 2 to receive no further updates until 2012. Now they may launch a product we haven't seen before but that's a whole different ballgame.
Now as to the OP, disagree completely. The iPad 2 IS super compelling to me and I own the first iPad. Why? Because the performance increase alone is going to be worth the purchase. The iPad is my day-to-day computer and I very rarely reach for a laptop anymore. I log more hours on it that anything other than the work desktop and all of the initial reviews are showing that the increased performance is VERY noticeable. It reminds me of the PC business 10 years ago where a system upgrade had a massive impact on real world performance and I suspect that this may, in fact, be the best price / performance upgrade I've done in at least a decade.
As for iOS 5 being announced after the device, I have no problem with that and actually think it's a superb move by Apple. The initial month or so after launch is irrelevant anyway, that stock will always be taken up by the Apple faithful. By the time it's staying in stock Apple will have shown the world what's coming up in the next version of the software and therefore the iPad gets another blast of publicity. That, and the remaining initial demand, carries sales to the summer when there's ANOTHER burst of publicity from the release of iOS 5 and the new iPhone with the possibility of another cool feature being a point release somewhere around the iPod Touch launch in September. Makes perfect sense to me and looks like a hell of a good business model.
