1. I've seen lots of commentary along the lines of "It's doomed to fail because it doesn't have X" (where X is a camera, flash support, desktop-style OS, multitasking support, a hardware keyboard, HDMI output, an open app store, or any of a dozen other features various people consider "must have"). This is wrong. No gizmo can do everything--the question is whether this one does enough.
2. The iPad isn't intended as (or even capable of being) your primary computing device. It will succeed if it's a more convenient laptop for casual web surfing. It will fail if it's an iPhone which doesn't fit in your pocket.
3. iPad is a clunky name, but so is MacBook. If it succeeds, nobody will care about the name.
4. Nine years ago, when Bill Gates announced that everyone would be using Tablet PC's, I don't think he meant "made by Apple."
5. I have no idea if the iPad will be useful, but for the price I may be willing to take a chance. I've certainly spent more than this on gadgets which didn't meet my expectations in the past. The $500 price is critical in this decision--if it had been $1,000, I would look at it more like a new laptop than a potentially useful toy.
6. Apple clearly intends to upend the accepted practices of user interface design (practices which Apple was instrumental in popularizing). On the whole, this is a Good Thing, since the desktop user interface is (or has become) far to complicated and technical for a large population of users to properly manage.

Our trusty Braun coffee maker (a wedding present from almost 16 years ago) recently died. I wanted to replace it with something which wouldn't die on us after a year or two, so the cheap $20 Mr. Coffee from Target was out.

I've heard people rave about vacuum extraction coffee makers, so I decided to investigate....and bit. For $75 (including shipping from Amazon), I picked up a Bodum Santos 34-ounce vacuum extraction coffee maker.

This is an entirely different way of making coffee from the usual automatic drip.  There are two chambers, a lower one which you fill with water, and an upper one filled with coffee grounds.  You boil the water in the lower chamber, which forces it up through a tube into the upper chamber where the hot water and grounds mix.  Then you remove it from the heat, and as the steam in the lower chamber cools it sucks the coffee back into the lower chamber through a filter.

As soon as I got the box this afternoon, I brewed a pot of decaf (it being past my usual hour for stimulants).  Following the advice of many people online, I preheated the water in the microwave to save time on the stove (a good idea).  And by golly, even though I don't consider myself a coffee geek, I really can taste the difference from our old drip coffee maker.  It has a much stronger coffee flavor with less bitterness.

Plus, it's fun to watch.

So the scorecard for the vacuum extraction coffee maker is:

Advantages:

• Fun to watch
• Simple: nothing electrical and no moving parts
• No replaceable filters, and easy to clean
• Brews a fine cuppa joe

Disadvantages:

• Fussier than a drip coffee maker
• More expensive than Mr. Coffee (though not more expensive than a high-quality coffee maker).
• Makes a smaller pot than a large coffee maker