I've had my 'New iPad' since it was released (Best Buy had a lot of them in stock). I'm surprised at how useful I'm finding this, my first tablet, to be. It's purpose will differ depending on the person. Think of it as a PDA with all the usefulness of a netbook minus a keyboard (both the good and bad that comes with that). Only, it now has an incredible screen and the battery life is ten hours of actual use (around there).
If you find yourself browsing the web a lot without typing much (say, on forums, emails, or whatever) it's a remarkably useful device. It's portability makes it so much more useful than a netbook for this sort of stuff.