Fair enough. I don't have much experience in hospitals.
But my point remains - a tablet device is less of a replacement for a normal deskop or laptop computer, and more of a mobile specialised information-processing tool. Another application I thought of was for architects or building foremen, so that they can carry about the complete blueprints. Or field scientists, for recording data on the fly. The list goes on. An iPad could fill all these niche markets, depending on how cleverly its apps are programmed. Of course, as you point out, it's not the only available device that can do that. The iPhone isn't the only available mobile phone device either, nor is the iPod the only portable music player.
What I'm trying to point out is that all of this has all already been done. A lot. For years. It works really great, which is why it is so successful. It just hasn't been "out there" where everyone can see. All of the examples you just mentioned, plus many, many, more are so "done" that the competitors have been fighting each other for existing market, because so much of the prospective market has been tapped.
They aren't going to be writing new apps as much as deciding whether it's worth the trouble to port the apps they've already been selling all this time to a hardware platform and OS of dubious prospects. Apple may be expanding that prospective market but they're going to be doing it inadvertently, by dispelling mistaken impressions. Like this one...
... You say "a tablet device is less of a replacement for a normal deskop or laptop computer". This is a misapprehension. The one I toted around in the field I could take back into my office and slide into its docking station, where it became virtually indistinguishable from a laptop, certainly in function, and sometimes even in form, as when visitors I had were stunned to see me get up from my desk, slide it out of the docking station and tuck it under my arm to go back out in the field. At a meeting I could set it up in its keyboard/cover and it was identical in form and function to all the mainstream laptops at the table. Then I could lay it down, sketch on it like a legal pad and pass it around, or send the sketch to them over a network connection.
Laptops can't pass for tablets, but any decent tablet can pass as a laptop with ease.
Here are the specs for a bottom end configuration for the tablet I used in 2004.
Windows XP Tablet PC; 1GHz Intel Pentium M; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; Intel 855GM Extreme Graphics (up to 64MB); Hitachi Travelstar 20GN 20GB 4,200rpm.
That was ~$1700, which is why I say that I hope that mainstreaming will result in some economy of scale. The one I used had more RAM and a much bigger hard drive. At that time it was very much a vertical market item. I don't think that Motion even had any sales outlets, then, although I did start seeing some around in computer stores a year or two later. Their initial sales were almost all straight from the manufacturer. They were pretty much built on demand. You'd buy one from them, and then they'd put it together.
That new Lenovo offering someone pointed out upthread looks really interesting. It doesn't appear to have any problems about replacing a laptop, either.
