Steve, I don't know what your needs are exactly, but I've always had a PC desktop, but when I was wishing for something smaller for podcasts I asked my youngest son who lives at home going to college if I could use his "original iPad". He'd sort of put it aside and used his apple laptop for schoolwork, but he'd always enjoyed the iPad. I'd never given it a thought, just remember a friend down the street had raved about his when they came out.
I quickly became addicted to it. I always do my reading propped up in bed, but browsing the net, for instance amazon for books, had a limited life for me because sitting in the chair doing that mouse thing made it a chore after awhile. But I found that with the iPad, I could lie in bed, and it was so much more comfortable. I even found an app for chess.com and can play online more comfortably.
Then disaster struck. My son went out of town for three weeks and wanted his iPad back! I did without for a day, and then just figured I'd buy my own, and looked around, and ended up just calling the apple store and ordering a brand new iPad 2. I gulped a bit at the price, $399, but shipping was free and it was in my hands in four days fed ex. The only delay at even that was it sat in the fed ex facility (you're given a tracking number) in china for two days, then suddenly in anchorage, and I thought oh, heck, another three days, but no, next day it was here.
It's got to be twice the speed of the original iPad. I've got high speed wireless Internet in the house, and it's light and comfortable to hold in bed. I'll never, ever(!) do anything but read actual paper books, but for browsing the net this ipad2 is just superb in speed and comfort. I could have spent another hundred for the latest iPad, but I just wanted what my son had, which was comfortable and fast, but this ipad2 leaves it in the dust. I love it! Kim
(more to do with how much you have resource wise for vista as it works fine on a well specked PC).