My Macbook Air stopped working so I used it as an excuse to get an iPad for light text-entry and blog posting.

I’ve had the iPad for nearly a week and I like it a lot. I have the basic 16GB version with Wi-Fi.

Here are some notes:

-The keyboard is surprisingly good. I make very few mistakes and tapping on glass is not too weird.

– Flipboard is very good, it is very close to being a killer app for iPad. It’s a little strange seeing my own posts with someone else’s "byline". Flipboard credits the person sharing the content rather than the author(!)

– The long 10 hour battery life is fantastic, no need to worry about finding a plug or scoping out the best locations near plugs at airports, cafes.

– The lack of Flash isn’t too much of a problem, at least not so far. I can’t view my Pearltrees account (HTML 5 version coming soon) but I can still "Pearl" new content.

– You definitely need a case so that you can prop it up for viewing and use as a desk for typing. Apple shouldn’t sell it without a basic case because it makes it so much easier to use.

– It’s really helpful to have it as an extra screen on my desk, where I have two laptops and a secondary screen. Four screens is very nice, or five with the iPhone.

– My next computer will be a desktop because my mobile needs are pretty well covered between the (heavy) MacBook Pros, the iPad and iPhone. The desktop are faster and have more storage at nearly half the price of a full-featured laptop. Here is where Apple could lose some sales, in upgrades of laptops as people return to using desktops.

– The iPad is really nice to use in social occasions: talking with people and showing off web content; it is very shareable physically; it’s very unobtrusive in a way that a notebook isn’t.

– It’s also very good in using it to demo software. You could use it to run a full presentation. Fuze Meeting has a great app for doing just that.

– The iPad applications cache a lot of content which means you don’t need a connection to read tons of content. I wish the iPhone was smart about cacheing data in the same way.

– GMail caches a lot of email and the layout is really good, with a list on the left and nearly instant viewing in a main screen.

– The lack of being able to keep a bunch of apps or browser windows open at the same time isn’t a problem because it is very fast at loading.

– My friend Uwe’s ArtRage painting program for iPad works great (see above). I just wish I had some artistic abilities.

– I use Evernote for note taking so it is synced across all my computers and devices via the cloud.

– Finding apps is a challenge because there are so many to choose from. Many of the ‘free’ apps aren’t really free because they are almost unusable unless you upgrade.

– It helps me be better organized because I can keep my to-do list at hand, and also keep my gmail or Tweetdeck accounts open as I work on my other screens.

– It would be great if it had a video camera to do video Skype calls but I can do that with my phone so not a big deal.

– Reading is very comfortable.

– Video looks great, Netflix, etc.

– The price $499 is very good value. Even better, go to Best Buy and ask if they have any open box iPads and get 10% off. Use the savings to pay for an Apple case.

[Cross-posted at Silicon Valley Watcher]