According to Michael Gartenberg, the two share the fact that mainstream consumers have huge levels of interest in them.  He has a feeling that non-techie users are excited about the iPad in ways that they very rarely are for any tech product – similar to the excitement people felt for Windows 95 and the iPhone.

Check out his article on this for ComputerWorld HERE, for more of his thoughts on this subject.

I am beginning to get a similar impression – I’m seeing big enthusiasm for the iPad amongst ‘normal’ non-techie folks as well.

What do you all think?  Is the iPad drawing major interest among your non-techie friends and acquaintances?  Will this interest translate into sales?

everythingiCafe is my favorite iPhone forum site, and has been for a very long time.  It’s a great place to get troubleshooting advice on an iPhone problem, and to discuss all sorts of iPhone-related topics (and even plenty of off-topic stuff).

EIC is covering the iPad as well now – and they’ve got a great giveaway contest going – where you have a chance to win a free 16GB iPad.

Entering for a chance to win is very easy – you basically just need to be a member at EIC (new or existing), have an avatar, and make 5 quality posts between now and March 31st. 

A winner will be chosen on or around April 1st.  Head on over here to get yourself in with a chance to win yourself an iPad, and to enjoy the lovely EIC community:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/blog/win-an-ipad-from-everythingicafe/2010/02/10/

If you’re after a thorough and insightful rundown of what the iPad was like to touch and use after the Apple demo event last week, I’d recommend Andy Ihnatko’s hands-on piece for the Chicago Sun Times.

The article is full of great information and really makes you feel almost as if you’d handled the device yourself.

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There are quite a few popular comic books apps for the iPhone – and comic books in general look like quite a good natural fit for the iPad, with its big screen and great media consumption traits.

Rosa Golijan at Gizmodo definitely thinks so, and she’s had a sneak peek at what Panelfly, makers of a leading iPhone comics app, have got planned for the iPad. I’m not big on comics, but I have to admit the screens look well impressive.

If you’re a comic books fan, give Rosa’s article a look and start looking forward to seeing that Panelfly app hit the iPad:

http://gizmodo.com/5463681/comic-books-will-look-incredible-on-the-ipad

I love watching the Charlie Rose show, and I love hearing some serious technology experts talk about the iPad.  Combine those two things and, at least for me, it’s a total chocolate plus peanut butter moment.

So I just enjoyed the heck out of watching twenty plus minutes of Charlie talking to Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, and David Carr of the New York Times all about the iPad.  There are of course a number of great insightful lines throughout the show, but my two favorites – both from David Carr at around the 12:10 mark – are these:

This’ll be a more viral gadget than most, because it’s so large … if you’re sitting next to someone it’s going to market itself. 

It was a terrible day for Amazon and a terrible day for Kindle. … but he left the picture of the Kindle up there for like two minutes and it looked like something mennonites made 150 years ago.

The entire video of the talk is great stuff to watch and listen to.  Check it out HERE.

I found the most convincing proof I’ve seen that Google is making a Tablet. I found it while hunting down screenshots and pictures of the Apple iPad using Google Image Search. No matter how hard I tried I kept coming up with everything but pictures of the iPad.

That’s an excerpt from a post by Marc over at the Ilium Software Blog.  It caught my eye and I thought I’d try my luck with image searches for iPad.  My results were just as bad, as you may be able to see in the above screencap. 

The first page of image results for a Google search for ‘Apple iPad’ yielded not a single image of the actual device, and lots that are of mockups of the device before release – and most not even close to the real appearance of the iPad.

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Well, the iPad may turn out to be a hit, or a flop; a game-changer or a should’ve had its name changed – but one thing’s for sure, it is one hell of a good source of humor and is destined to be the butt of countless jokes.

Just the name itself is more than enough fodder to get the ball rolling.  Throw in its iPhone-like lack of some features that many geeks think are dealbreakers, and the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding the device, and it’s a surefire recipe for iPad-tastic jokefests.

There are already quite a lot of excellent ‘iPad vs.  …’ images up on the web, like the neck and neck battle with a Maxipad shown above – where the Maxipad just edges it through its win in the ‘super absorbant’ category.

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