A few reasons why I’ll get an iPad before Christmas — perhaps. Maybe.

Over the last little while I’ve been fol­low­ing the news around Apple’s latest tech­no­lo­gic­al mar­vel, the iPad. Sure, at this time, only the Wi-Fi ver­sion is avail­able (and only in the US), but there’re enough news and reviews out there that it’s quite easy for­mu­late an early opin­ion — espe­cially since I already have an iPod Touch and am used to it’s inter­face and way of doing things.

Why would I get an iPad?
There are many reas­ons, but here’s a few that are top of mind, mostly around use of media:

• Ref­er­ence Doc­u­ments — I hate car­ry­ing around pages of stuff that is only used for ref­er­ence. I love car­ry­ing around pages of stuff that’s only used for ref­er­ence — if it’s in a digit­al format. I do this cur­rently with my iPod Touch, once I figured out how easy it was to view pdf and doc files on my Touch, that is. I expect that the iPad will let me view my .pdf and doc files in much the same way.
• eBooks — Sim­il­ar to the reas­on­ing for Ref­er­ence Doc­u­ments, but with this addi­tion. I’m get­ting older and am real­iz­ing that read­ing on a lar­ger screen is easi­er than the smal­ler dis­play on my Touch.
• Games — I’m enjoy­ing the low-cost high-qual­ity games that are com­ing out of the iPhone eco­sys­tem. I’m think­ing there are going to be more of the same for the iPad. With the lar­ger form factor, it’ll be a new experience.

Why before Christmas?
Well, Apple released the iPad in April (May for rest-of-world). This gives enough time for the plat­form to sta­bil­ize, the oper­at­ing sys­tem and hard­ware to be patched to fix obvi­ous bugs and tech­nic­al issues. Maybe.

I’m not into invest­ing in first gen­er­a­tion tech­no­logy when I can avoid it, but per­haps I will have an iPad by Christ­mas, if all goes well. Maybe.