I use my iPad all the time in my day to day life, several times a day. In the morning I flip through my Flipboard and catch up email and news while I eat breakfast and sip coffee. I take it with me to class and look through PDF's while the instructor is presenting. For example, I go on Wikipedia and I look at related material as I learn about it. (And yes in a particularly boring class I go to reddit, here, or play a game). In office I like to hook my headphones to it and listen to music. When I work on a problem set I always open the PDF on my iPad-- no need to print. When I go to a talk I always take it with me in case it is boring. While I eat dinner I also browse the internet, with the iPad next to my plate. Finally, I also read all my books on it now.

All these things could be done with a laptop I suppose, but the iPad is so simple to take out from the bag and just start using it right away. It occupies very little space and is much lighter. In fact, I actually don't use my laptop anymore... I use my desktop in office or home, or iPad everywhere else.

I have an iPad and barely use it as well. BUT...that is because my wife and 1.5 year old are on it constantly. If you have kids, it is absolutely the most fantastical product you could ever own. Beginning at around 8 or 10 months, my son could use it pretty effectively. For xmas, we got a case to mount it on the back of my car's front seat. Just slide it in, turn on a movie and the kids are engaged for hours.

I actually do use it a lot, mostly for surfing web, reading email, watching movies/tv, etc. I generally use it where a notebook would be awkward such as in bed, while watching tv, in the car, and, yes, on the john.

Well, I certainly didn't appreciate the potential use cases for an iPad: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1236558 until I used one for a while. I love gaming on the iPad. The abundance of well-designed, easy and quick to play 2D games is almost overwhelming.

The iPad is fantastic for video. Several hours of tutorials or iTunesU before needing a charge. My 11" air can burn a full charge in a couple of hours of video playback (flash or html5). And it's nice to watch on the iPad, and code along on the Air.

Reading and browsing goes to the Air or EeePC. The keyboard makes a very convenient stand. Lying in bed, propping the front edge of the laptop on my chest and using the trackpad to navigate is ridiculously effortless (and lazy). Page load is noticeably faster. Text is also much crisper on the otherwise inferior TFT screen. A touchscreen does bring a somewhat visceral (for lack of a better word) feel to browsing that I miss on a computer.

Of course, all of the above would hold true for an Android tablet as well. Ok, maybe not the games, yet, but the Market is getting there quickly.

I use mine for everything I use a computer for which isn't creative. So things like watching movies, reading books, reading the news, reading textbooks (who said learning had to stop in high-school/college?), reading articles, playing games, facebook, twitter, browsing dribbble, in general chilling out and screwing around.

Once I need to write/design/code then I whip out my laptop.

There are periods that I go without using it at home (I read a lot on the train with it), but when I do I am reminded of why I bought it. The internet in your hands really gets me

At work I have a 13" mbp with 24" cinema display that I rarely take home. Then at home I have my 27" imac so I primarily leave my ipad at home and use it at night to do more long term web reading. Like if there is an insightful multi-page article thats not just for quick skimming. Also use for some stupid games, reading on kindle app, and occasional email if I forgot to send out something before I went to bed.

I have the same question. What do people use iPad for? I myself am laggard when it comes to electronic gadget and I haven't got an iPad yet. I got a Kindle though since it's good for reading.

Some of my pianist friends use iPad for reading music sheets while playing. But they don't use it much besides that.

I like mine for reading the news (HN and otherwise) in the morning, still laying in bed (takes me a while to become fully awake).

I use it the same way throughout the day: casual browsing, social networking. Doing that helps keep distractions off my real computer, so I can stay focused on and do real work. Plus its convenient to take with me and read articles during lag time when I'm out and about or running errands.

That said, while I love my iPad, the whole syncing thing is a major quagmire. One of the "geniuses" at the Apple Store accidentally wiped my boss's iPad clean during a one-on-one session. I wasn't surprised, given that iTunes pops up attempting to do that every time you plug your iPad into a computer other than the original host.

I read this question, and I'm typing my response, on my iPad.

The computer, even though its a laptop, lives on my desk with a chair in front of it. I use it for work (mostly).

The iPad is for everything else. Going up to the roof to hang out on the deck, I browse the web, play games, compose music with garage band, sometimes I'll play around with editing movies in iMovie (though it would really be better if I could use the iPad to edit movies that live on my computers hard drive, since thats where all my footage lives.)

The iPad is a dream for browsing the web, just big enough to be an expansive experience, but nearly as portable as the iPhone.

I can't imagine dragging the computer up to the deck. Its a laptop, sure, but it has a USB hub plugged into it, headphones, a mouse I periodically use and an external drive. These things effectively anchor it to the desk. Plus its much easier to sit in just about any position and use the iPad, where the laptop kinda forces you into the sitting-at-a-desk position.

The iPad also great for reading books. I have no paper books anymore-- all of my books are iBooks, and if there's a book I want to read, and the iBookstore doesn't have it, I don't buy it. The other day I downloaded over 200 ebooks in ePub format from the mises institute- http://mises.org. This means I have essentially the entire works of austrian economics on my iPad, at my fingertips. There are also probably another 200 books from the iBookstore we've accumulated, as well as Oreilley ebooks, and a very large collection of PDFs (the iBooks PDF viewer experience is dramatically improved recently and is just great now.)

I've also got the entire footage from WWDC 2011 on my iPad. I watch it periodically when I need to refresh myself on iOS development issues.

Of course there are some perennial movies that we like, and so I keep them synced to the iPad. Sometimes we'll put our TV shows on there that we subscribed to in iTunes.

I travel a lot, and the iPad is the full time computer on trains and planes.

The iPad has a big chunk of photos. I have a photo folder in aperture that syncs with it, and of course iCloud keeps the most recent 1000 photos. So, it was really easy to show photos to my parents when I visited them last, or to show a photo to my partner or co-founder.

When in lectures, or having a company meeting, I use the iPad to take notes. I have no problem touch typing on the on screen keyboard. I set the iPad down and use notepad and don't even have to look. Sometimes though we record discussions to be transcribed later, particularly during brainstorming.

The iPad is a great email machine. I'll read email on it and reply to people. Often late at night when I still have work to do but am tired, I'll get in bed and do email.

Of course, it also makes a great TV while in bed- I've watched Netflix movies and shows on Hulu, and used to watch TV on ABCs app in the past.

I use the iPad for research. I keep iCab open as a seperate browser specifically for researching technical topics. This way I can have a bunch of tabs open and essentially open unlimited tabs, and its never polluted by my normal browsing. I switch between iCab and notepad to make notes about ideas, and in this way I architected our main product. (In fact, I spent a couple weeks with an illness and used the iPad full time to do work those weeks.)

When there's an issue with one of our machines, I'll use the iPad to SSH into it and see if I can diagnose it, sometimes. (though of course usually I use the laptop for this stuff.)

Oh, I forgot, I do play games on it too. And I use twitter. And Facebook, though I don't use Facebook much at all these days.

Whenever I need to close tabs on my browser so that I can concentrate on work, I will use instapaper to save the tabs that I want to read later. Then, later, on the iPad I'll read those articles.

I use the iPad to keep in touch with my cofounders. We are often in different rooms and rathe than disturb each other we send iMessages back and forth.

When I need to talk to someone on the phone, I use the skype app. Haven't really used FaceTime much but might start doing that soon as the people I talk to are all on more modern hardware.

I have bluetooth headphones so if I'll be spending some serious time with iPad, I'll put on some tunes. I have a selection of music synced, but everything is in iCloud too so I an add whatever I want whenever I want. Its amazing to have your entire music library accessible in a portable way like this.

About the only thing I don't do on the iPad is write software...