Dinny,
Notice I said Macbook, not Pro. If I were buying an Ipad I'd never buy the 16GB, $499 model. I'd run out of space in a hurry and I remember often cursing my Touch for being wifi crippled so that means 3G too. Add that up and I'd swiftly be dropping $729 on something that is not a computer and something that requires that you have it tethered to an actual computer. With my discount I can get a brand new Macbook for $899 which to me just makes infinitely more sense for my use case and sounds to me like it's more what you're after as well. I want to offload and upload pictures, download movies and watch them (not just from Apple or Netflix), rip CD's and DVD's, blah blah blah.
That's my 2