Gee Larry, it's all negative. Do you have anything good to say about it?
You are absolutely correct in your diagnosis, but there are those of us out there, my wife being one of them, that is absolutely satisfied with the way the iPad works. Yes, I have a laptop, I have an iMac, I have a desktop. I was smart enough not to pay for an iPhone. Did I miss something there.
We don't use it as an office device, so there is no need to download software that would perform as an office device. I did download the "GoodReader" App for it. That worked great. I was wondering how to get all of my wife's email address into the iPad since I was not home when I purchased it and I could not Sync it to her email client. No problem. Exported her email to a CSV file, sent it in an email, and opened it with GoodReader. Once opened, just click on a name and it popped up a dialog asking if it should be added to the address book.
As you stated, it is not designed as an "office work platform." It has shortcoming, but so doesn't my iMac, Laptop, Desktop, cell phone, and many other electronic gadgets that we have. You can make some of the people happy some of the time, but you can't make all the people happy all the time, as the saying goes.
Yes, MS Office is a very well developed program, and if you want it on your laptop or mac, expect to pay upwards of $350. If you are in an office environment that requires a lot of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, then MS Office is definitely the way to go. However, I use Open Office, along with Thunderbird on the laptop as an email client, and have absolutely no problems with any of the Open Office programs, and it's free. That's why I could afford the iPad.
And Open Office will open all MS Office files. Did I mention it's free.
Outlook for the iMac doesn't exist so I use Eudora. I've gotten used to it, and since I'm not an "enterprise," it has satisfied my needs, sending and receiving email. Mac Mail is in itself a very good client and I just might transition over to it for easier synchronization to the iPad. (It does sync to Entourage)
So for all the "bads" in a program there are a lot of "goods" in that same program. Each person needs to do their research to find what is an acceptable "gadget" for themselves.
For us, the iPad has satisfied a small portion of "our" world.
Edited: If you are thinking of purchasing an iPad, do your own research. A search on the words "ipad pros and cons" will get you some interesting reading.
Again - we enjoy it.