Seems like a wanna be 10 inch netbook.
It's really a different use case and a different paradigm. It's an entirely touch-driven interface, providing an entirely different level of interactivity and usability. The screen also kicks the shit out of the average 10" netbook's screen, IPS absolutely blows everything away for text kerning/density and overall colour density as well as viewing angle.
The iPad, at least for students is for taking notes and having your textbooks/ebooks on it as well as a few games, or as a development platform.
If you want to do a billion things at once and run software that isn't available for the iPad, simply don't get one.
If you want a light and simple alternative to a netbook, with a shitton of battery life that has a less expansive feature set but works for what you want, grab one.
The apps on it are good now, but really aren't to the same level of applications that we've seen for the iPhone, thus far. Again, that's one of the reasons I got mine, to build applications that I'd actually want to use on the device.