Problem: College students have a backpack full of books that weigh a ton, cost a fortune, sometimes are out of date by the time they're printed, and benefit from color and interactivity you can't get on a Kindle.
Problem: Hospitals and medical offices moving to replace clipboards for patient charts, scans, etc. typically spend $2-3K for heavy, slow tablet PCs with a clunky interface.
Problem: Most laptops and DVD players don't have enough battery to watch a transcontinental flight's worth of movies.
It's not a very long or difficult search. Of course, we don't yet know what the killer app(s) for the iPad will be; a lot of clever and creative folks are working on that as we speak.
Apple didn’t invent touch screens, GUI’s, WiFi, 3G (coming for the iPad), or tablet computers. The uses you list are all perfectly valid...yet what do you feel makes Apple’s product so revolutionary?
It’s the interface. Face it. No more, no less. Yes, it is cool and hip and even utilitarian. That’s all good; I take nothing away from them in those arenas.
That said...what makes them so different in terms of real functionality/apps/real-world use? It may come, and it probably will....but it ain’t there yet. Any other manufacturer would have their head handed to them for offering a product that WILL be really useful...eventually.