gingerjet: Majick Thise: If Bill Gates thinks the iPad needs MS Office I wonder who he should talk to about changing that... oh wait that would be him.

Plenty of Bluetooth keyboards out there that will work with my iPad. I have never needed one though.. any doc I create on a mobile device is usually short and not mission critical so the onscreen keyboard is fine

When I originally bought an iPad I discovered what millions have also discovered - you don't need MS Office.  And that is what has Microsoft running scared.

You don't NEED Office, but for those who prefer it on a computer it would sure be nice. If MS made a stripped down version of Office for iOS (basic functions for Word, Excel, and Powerpoint), I'd buy it in a heartbeat. There's other apps that get it done (iCloud support for Pages is decent enough), but when you're sitting at your computer the good old faithful and capable Office is the standard of the world for interoperability and pretty much everything else. Sure, you CAN still use the iWork stuff to do it, but in many ways that isn't as seamless when swapping documents with others. Right now I use Pages for the occasional minor word processing work on the iPad and convert the document over to Word via iCloud when I get back to my computer.

IMO, the biggest problems with tablets and other mobile not-quite-a-computer devices is the biatchyness of the makers. Google doesn't want to play TOO nice with Apple or Microsoft because that might open a door in the future to leave Android behind. Microsoft doesn't want to play TOO nice with Apple or Google because that might open a door in the future to leave Windows behind. Apple doesn't want to... you get the idea. It's a regression from the free and open platforms we've known in the computing world. If you buy into Apple's environment you end up depending heavily on them. Ditto with Microsoft and Google. If you want to use Google Docs, it's going to be a pain in the ass if your phone or tablet isn't Android. Like Office? Hope you like Windows Mobile if you want to take it with you. Go iOS? Hope you like Apple's productivity suite.

This is what happens when software vendors also become hardware vendors. The products play VERY well together when they're all from the same vendor but rather poorly when you mix and match.

mayIFark: RexTalionis: Lucky LaRue: I'd like it better if it had MS Office. Or expandable memory. Or an HDMI port. Or any port, really..

[cdn.imore.com image 850x472]
There is a Lightning to HDMI adapter out there.

Interesting, but given its apple related product, how much does it cost? $59.99?

The adapters aren't cheap (depending on the adapter, anywhere from $30-60ish, IIRC), but they help slim down the packaging of the device. You can get off brand ones but those have iffy experiences. I have the VGA and the HDMI cables for my iOS stuff. Makes it really easy to pop a movie onto a larger screen if I like. They also make presentations from a tablet a breeze- don't need a full size computer, just connect to the display, load the presentation app, and away you go.