What is your point? There are many things in life that aren't available if you don't have the funds. This isn't the peoples pad, it is an Apple product. It is designed for elitist snobs like myself.

I really have no intention of sharing my iPad with anyone. It would be like sharing a physical address book, calendar or notebook with someone else. This is an exceptionally personal device, much like the iPhone and the iPod. Being that way dramatically reduces the number of steps between thinking something and doing something. If you want a device you can share, then you want something else. It is not a multipurpose laptop, and that is why I like it.

Actually it doesn't. I was in Antigua a couple of months back and the GPS thought it was in New Hampshire until I managed to find a cell signal. It basically gives up after a couple of minutes. I tried this for several days, before giving up and connecting to a network, where it found itself in a minute or so. This isn't such a big deal, but I've been unimpressed by the GPS in the iPhone.

I've bought a couple of VNC / RDP clients and they are good 'in a pinch' solutions. The problem is the mouse. Touch and point are too very different metaphors. They work, you can do everything, it just isn't as smooth as using it from a mouse based device.

Although the biggest criminal here is the web. Yes the standards are sloppy, but writing a decent web gui is a royal pain in the arse, it is not just IE, but it is certainly the biggest culprit.

If could download coffee, I would.

In the UK, the trick was to take a rubbish job, in a rubbish area with a big company. In my case Capgemini in Bumblefuck, Shropshire.