Lots of people have been asking me why I need an iPad (I plan on getting one really soon).

Here are the answers that I've been giving them (and myself) on why I need an iPad, before owning one:

• It turns on really fast (much faster than a laptop). This is great for taking notes, looking something up, checking my calendar...
• Relatively lightweight to carry around. I know a netbook may be lighter but carrying around an iPad is lighter than my laptop
• It can do most of the essential things I need to do on my laptop, especially when on the go: email, web, docs (mainly Google docs), twitter, watching videos, Skype
• It has a great interface for playing games
• The non-committal data plan. Whenever I'm in the States I can just purchase a $15 dataplan for that specific month, directly from the device. Very convenient. 
• It's cool, innovative, and really sleek (I gotta be a part of the revolution), which brings me to my final reason:
• Cuz I'm a geek, duh :)

So it won't replace my laptop altogether but while travelling it pretty much has me covered.


Here are the things I think I will be missing by carrying around only an iPad:

• No way to sync my iPhone (for backing up and transferring media)
• No Bittorrent client
• No way to convert videos for viewing on the iPad

Here's my list for 2010 of products that I absolutely can't live without (inspired by Mike Arrington's list).

These are all products that I use daily and either make my life easier or more fun (and are not trivial like my fridge and car).

This list is a current snapshot of my favorite products, I think the interesting part about it will be to look at it in the future and see how it changes.

Here we go:

• Gmail - you know what this is
• Google Reader - this and twitter are my main source of news (no tv, radio, paper, or news site)
• Twitter - no explanation needed (I hope at least)
• Facebook - ditto
• Zenbe lists - great iPhone App and web application for managing and syncing tasks from the iPhone and web 
• SplashID - password manager for the iPhone and desktop
• Flickr - where I store all my photos, including those that I post to Twitter
• iPhone 3GS - marvelous device
• Google Docs - where I create and store all my documents. I still use MS Office for Outlook and PowerPoint
• Dropbox - great free solution for automatically backing up any files I want, syncing them between computers, and accessing them from anywhere in the world
• Eztv - pretty much my only source for watching TV shows
• del.icio.us - where I store all the sites I may want to find again in the future
• Google Maps - use it all the time, especially when abroad
• Skype - use it mainly for saving on the phone bill, occasionally for IM
• Foursquare - ok, I could live without this one but I use it all the time
• Plancast - for letting people know what events I'm attending and to discover what events I should attend
• Digg - main way of seeing what's hot and finding cool stuff
• TechMeme - main way of keeping up to date with tech news
• AppShopper - how I track iPhone apps that lowered their price
• Blogger - the service I use to host and manage this blog
• Jango - great way to list to music I like online (used to be Last.fm till they started charging money)
• bit.ly - URL shortening service with very useful tracking information
 

Since the iPhone is such a big part of my day to day, here are the iPhone apps that I can't live without:

• Waze - free turn by turn GPS application
• Boxcar - how I get Twitter reply and DM push notifications
• IM+ - how I get gmail push notifications 
• NoteMaster - app to edit and view Google Docs on the iPhone
• qStatus - app to easily update Twitter

Feel free to post yours in the comments...