My family bought me an iPad for fathers day last year. I have been completely surprised how much I use it professionally and personally. Here are the ways I have been using it that I never expected: The only computer I use at home (sometimes I don't turn on my laptop at work until lunch time either) Never taking a laptop on a vacation again Teaching my kids the alphabet, numbers, and simple arithmetic (I was shocked how well this worked & how much the kids were into it) Watching Netflix Letting kids use the iPad on vacation so I can sleep in Tracking my finances on Mint (until I ditched Mint - that's for another blog post) Writing blog posts (this one included) Flipboard! Playing casual games (I never used my iPhone or Android phone for this before) Actually using Twitter Finding creative commons images on Flickr Reading articles sent from people at work after hours Reading the blogs I follow in Google Reader Looking at Pivotal tracker while I'm jumpin