What will really determine its value are whatever "apps" people develop to make it do stuff.
See
The iPad's secret sauce: it's the software, stupid. But note that this perspective still regards the iPad as a device solely for content consumption. There seems to be what I'll call a "geek rapprochement" of sorts going on: we first dismissed the device because it can't do anything a power user would want to do; now we acknowledge that most folks don't want to do such things but would rather just play games, read books, and listen to tunes. (The iPad as appropriately dumb device for a dumb audience.)
Missing, generally, is any mention of the possible development of whole new classes of "power users," those for whom a clipboard-style deployment of a large-screen multitouch device allows software to enter realms which have previously been limited to mechanical devices. And, as the iPhone has clearly established, if there's a useful application to be built, someone will build it.
(It would be fun to see someone develop a programmer-friendly text editor for the iPad, too, just as a way of saying, "see?")
