Recipes, news, email, web browsing, picture browsing, games, book reading, movie streaming/playback... all of these things are very easy, and even pleasurable on the iPad.

You can certainly transfer pictures and videos to the iPad using the camera connector kit, but you are limited to file size. There are a number of programs which are great for editing pictures and video (not the least of which are imovie and iphoto). However, if you are planning on using an iPad for a lot of this kind of media, you will run out of space. There are some 3rd party wireless harddrive which supposedly work with the iPad, but the internal storage is NOT expandable.

Another factor that might be an issue for you is that iPad's do not have multiple user accounts... it's one account for everyone, only one AppleID login at a time. On a computer, it's a cinch to create a few accounts, set ones up for kids with restrictions, etc. That is not the case on the iPad, so consider that. Realistically, especially for a family, I don't think a standalone iPad is a viable solution.

For what you are talking about, you would be better suited with an iMac. If you absolutely need something portable, a 11" macbook air would be the cheapest solution, but the 13" macbook pro is the best bang for the buck (in terms of laptops).

an iPad is just what you need. In order to download photos from your camera you have to buy an adapter for the memory card (at apple stores). For your recipes, well, I dont know how ofter do you scan recipes, but you can probably have them scanned all at once at your local print service shop, or at a friend´s house, then you can upload them to your ipad. For streaming movies get a new apple tv, and you are pretty much done with out ever using a laptop again at home. -excuse my bad english...

My concern is the storage size of the ipad. Do they have a large enough harddrive for all your photos and videos over the next few years?

I use my iPad in place of my laptop about 90% of the time I'm home/not working. I would whole-heartedly recommend one in place of a new laptop, but maybe not if it was the only computer in the house. I echo what Ian said about space limitations, user accounts, etc. Also, despite the fact that I use mine for more than JUST media consumption, there are some activities that aren't ideal like word processing/Excel/Office-type projects, more involved photo/video management and editing, or serious research (ie schoolwork/academic stuff). You can do it all, just not always as easily.

You don't mention what your family is. If it's just you, your husband and a toddler, you very well might be able to get away with an ipad until your kid is older, if you're comfortable with the limitations on some of the things you mentioned (transferring photos, scanning, etc). If you have older kids, I don't think I can imagine a whole family sharing one iPad vs. sharing a laptop. To me it's like suggesting you replace your home land line with a single iPhone. You have your own apps, your own stuff, it's by your side constantly....totally usable by other people, just doesn't feel as natural.

get a new laptop, for the price of an ipad you can afford a new laptop and printer

plus the amount of hard drive space for downloading videos, photos, and anything else you need on an ipad would not be sufficient where with a laptop you should easily cover most of this...

you will also need to buy specialized connectors to connect most cameras, or other hardware to your ipad, where with a laptop, it is likely to have all the usb ports you would need to attach anything you want.. plus the screen is larger..

its more adapatable to other needs you may not need at the moment, there are better full fledged programs to use.. I could go on and on..

don't make the mistake.. choose the laptop

Adding that one of my favorite uses of my ipad is for recipe management and using it in the kitchen while cooking, but the scanning part wouldn't be easy unless you could instead take a photo of recipes you normally scan. Are you scanning things from magazines? I haven't come across recipes in any magazine that I can't find online and then quickly file into my manager (the Paprika app), but if you're scanning in recipes that other people have handwritten or something, I guess that gets more complicated, but there's always manual entry in cases where the recipes aren't available online.

Why not a netbook? More affordable, but less trendy...

easy alternative to scanning your recipes would be just to take a picture of them, which is essentially what scanning them is...

the tough part is going to be downloading photos and videos from your cameras, like as was mentioned before it can be done to a degree on the iPad, but 16 or even 64Gb of storage space is not a whole lot when you count your pictures, video, and music files. Some will tell you that is what iCloud is about, but i would prefer to have a copy of all my precious moments in multiple locations, and also have the ability to access them when an internet connection is not available to me.

I see a tablet as a companion to a PC/Mac, and not a full on replacement.

And I would have to disagree with the previous argument that a 13" Macbook Pro is the best "bang for your buck", as it starts at $1200... and for that price, you could get a nice similarly spec-ed windows machine (2.4Ghz i5/4GB Ram/500GB Hard Drive) for around $480 at bestbuy, then get an 16GB wifi iPad and spend less than you would on just a macbook pro 13...

if you are wanting to see the $480 laptop, search for 4854891 at Bestbuy's website. It is an ASUS K53E-BBR15... ASUS has been around for a long time, making machines for all the big name companies... and recently started making their own branded devices not too long ago, but make top notch stuff none the less... might be easier to think of them as the HTC of computer world.

Yep, I love my Ipad for my family but it couldn't replace my laptop. I use it to surf the web and even for photos and videos but I store almost nothing on it (partly because it has no significant storage and partly because I worry much more about losing it.) A laptop connected to a nice big monitor which might serve multiple purposes (like watching videos, gaming, etc.) might better serve your family in the long term.

Side note, hate the ipad for typing and I don't want to deal with keeping up with a seperate keyboard. If emailing or working on school projects is at all a family activity for you, the laptop is much better.

@Mark Z: I should clarify, when I said best bang for the buck, I meant of apple computers... You are quite correct, for the needs listed here, there are many more affordable alternatives.

If all you want is a checklist of spec's, get the latest cheap laptop. If you are looking for a much better USER experience, go with an ipad.

Apple is evil, just ask Adam and Eve.

I love my ipad for web surfing and watching videos. I hate it for sending emails because the keyboard is too small and is awkward to use.

If you only have one, I would get a computer. I cannot see preparing a school assignment, for example, on an ipad. I am a professional editor and I use my computer for working on documents.

The ipad is a great toy - I play with mine all the time. But it quickly runs out of hard drive space. You need an inexpensive netbook or laptop to save everything you listed.

I love my iPad but it is NOT a computer replacement. Unless you also have a desktop lurking in the background somewhere, I would really, really not recommend replacing your laptop unless the only use for your laptop is the occasional email.

Sure, you can very easily download photos - but actually managing them is impossible to do without a third party software, and I have yet to discover a good one that can really easily manage large amounts of pictures from various sources.

And yes, in a pinch you can write school papers on one - but it's NOT fun, even with one of the better word processing apps and a bluetooth keyboard.

I'd suggest getting a small cheap desktop or netbook type device and then it won't be so hard to save up for the iPad later. And hey, if it takes until the iPad 5 or 4b to save up, then your iPad will be that much more awesome. (This is what I tell myself whenever I just can't afford to get the new Apple toy.)

I love the iPad, but if I could only have one computing device it would be a laptop.

Of you want to file recipes and photos in folders, you can't do that on an iPad - and, if you could, file sizes for photos would be large.

For recipes, if you have them scanned and you have the Ki dle App, you can email them as PDFs to your Kindle email and then load the recipes into iBooks.

That being said, you need a laptop. An iPad isanaddition to a primary computer. Netbooks are dead, and are slow, small screens, etc they were only an item until the iPad came out.

I love my iPad and use it constantly - but I still need a real computer.

Before I read your list of wants, I was thinking YES!!

The thing with your family photos is that you will want to back them up somehow. Please be sure to find some other solution (smugmug?) for storing your photos "in the cloud". That way you can upload them from your phones and access them anywhere, and you don't have to worry about all your memories being lost if something happens to your iPad.

It's a wonderful addition to your home computing, but as most have said, it cannot be the sole computer. How about a desktop and iPad? I bought my iPad on a whim. I absolutely love it. And it is soooo useful for my toddler! As much as I think it's a necessity, it's really not.

The iPad is amazing but I doubt that anyone but the most basic person could use it as their primary (or only) computing device.

If you can only afford one thing get the laptop.

Didn't you all hear about the horrible conditions iPad workers are forced to work in that 300 of them committed suicide. I wouldn't support that.

I'd recommend an Asus Transformer Prime. I got one for Christmas and love it. It's the same price as an iPad, but you get more storage - $499 gets you 32gb, $599 gets 64.

For an extra $150, you can buy the keyboard dock to turn it into a mini-laptop. That keyboard also gives you a USB port, where you could directly connect your camera to download photos - no kits required.

Also, if you start running out of space, it has expandable storage: micro SD on the tablet itself, SD on the keyboard.

Yes, it's not an iPad and it runs Android. But it still does everything you wanted, and the user interface is very easy. So basically, for $750 (maybe an extra $50 for SD cards), you get a laptop/tablet hybrid that does everything you requested, lasts 18 hours on a single charge and can hold over 200gb - that's a lot of photos.

I have two iPads (1st and 2nd gen) and I have a laptop that is on it's way out. Honestly, the laptop doesn't get used that much between my boyfriend and I but it does come in handy when in need of a good word processor or being able to upload photos. You need a laptop to upload the pics which will then go to your iPad through iCloud. Also, the ability to view any video that has flash is non-existent with the iPad. It's a great toy, but with a family I would definitely recommend going the laptop route and then maybe purchasing a tablet down the road.

The iPad is a great device and is probably good enough if you're prepared to change the way you do things and get a wireless harddrive to store all the stuff that you won't have space for on the iPad and / or use iCloud or Dropbox.

The 64gb iPad is $699 or $829 with 4g.

Assuming your budget is around $900, I'd go for a $500-600 laptop and look at getting 2nd iPad 2. The $500-600 laptops are good machines, they mightn't have te latest intel chips but they're solid machines.

I love my 1st gen iPad but, even with the new iPad coming out and iCloud services, if I had to have only one device for emailing, browsing, storing photos and recipes, etc, I would get a desktop or laptop. The iPad's limited storage capacity and added cost of backing up a device that has more than 5GB of data would be my main issues. They also seem to be coming out with a new very improved iPad every year or so. And although my original iPad is still working ok, I've noticed considerable performance issues with newer apps. I'm super-psyched about buying the new iPad replacing my already out-of-date 2yo one but i consider this device to be an awesome 'compliment' to my laptop at best. A replacement? Wouldn't think of it.

Keep in mind the iPad was developed to be a companion to your computer first and foremost, plain and simple. I believe you'd be better off buying a new computer if it has to be one or the other.

I'd recommend a netbook, personally.