Heh. Several years ago I got suckered by all the Mac hype, and bought one - a Mac mini. I quickly came to regret it, and now, despite all the raves and hoopla over iPhones and iPads, I just cannot bring myself to even consider getting any Apple product ever again. (Oh, and I positively LOATHE iTunes.)
I can't make any recommendations for what you, or anyone in your shoes, should do. It seems to me that your choice is extremely personal, and depends on what your daily activities are, and what you expect from these devices. I love my Asus eeePC, and you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands before I'll give it up -- even though, yes, the screen is small and the processor is underpowered. It boots up faster than my other PCs, and it does whatever I need for it to do. But then, I don't game, and I don't do graphics intensive work. Whenever I'm on the road, the netbook is with me, and I have used it at friends/ and relatives' houses to kill time. I use a pay-as-you-go mobile broadband plan, which limits my monthly data expenses, and which I believe is not an option with the iPad. I like it for blogging, for writing projects, for surfing, and as a convenient way to dump my pictures from my camera. I also use it a lot for doing work related stuff while on the road, which involves MS Office (fortunately, we're still stuck back on Office 2002, so it doesn't especially overtax my netbook.) Since I touch-type, A regular QWERTY keyboard is also a must. Even if I wanted to buy an iPad, it just couldn't do these particular things well, and that's a deal breaker for me.
I am also in the process of moving from a Palm T|X to a Blackberry. This isn't by choice, but is being dictated by work. I must say that although the old Palm was long in the tooth, I am shocked to discover the paucity of apps for the Blackberry. It's been around for a long time, yet there doesn't seem to be much variety among available applications. Although the Blackberry is better at the "internet-y" stuff (twittering, surfing, instant messaging), it's much worse at the things that I loved about my old Palm: note taking, memo's, database, and profession-specific applications. (Where's the resistor color code app? The steam tables app? and how come I can only find one scientific calculator?) I was also surprised that the old Palm provided me a better user experience with its native email, contacts, and calendar apps. Really, the "crackberry" has been somewhat of a letdown. (Google Mobile Apps, however, are awesome.)
Since my day job dictates that I have a netbook and a Blackberry, and between them I get most of my portable electronic needs met, something like the iPad would only add more weight to my bag without any noticeable benefit. Although I've been intrigued by the thought of a portable tablet, I'm not convinced that one can take the place of both a laptop and a phone. If I were in your shoes, and had an extra $700 to spend on something, I think I'd get myself a Wii and, with that stupid ol' Mac of mine finally biting the dust, a small form-factor desktop (Win7, thank you) to act as a media server.
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