Everybody's talking about it. Since it launched in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, only one term has been on technophiles' lips. iPad. Will it revolutionise mobile computing or is it just another piece of pricey must-have technology?

With a 9.7 inch screen, at 0.5 inches thick and weighing just 1.5 pounds, it's a touchscreen computer that looks pretty cool, although it seems that, if the debate raging on the blogs right now is to be believed, no-one is really 100% sure about what it's supposed to do.

From newspapers hailing it as a 'tablet computer' (although it doesn't run general computer software, just stuff from the App store), to Steve Jobs thanking Kindle for paving the way for Apple to create the latest generation of 'e-reader', there's no real consensus on what it actually is. Apple have loosely pitched it as filling the gap between laptops and iPhones, which is certainly does size-wise; however as more than an e-reader but less than a tablet function-wise, where does that leave it? It allows users to do lots of things that a Kindle can't - like watch DVDs or work on your spreadsheets, but it still doesn't allow things you could do on a normal tablet; like play Flash games or multi-task. To top it all off, the cheapest model only has 16 GB hard drive. That's less memory than most of us have got on our USB sticks - which we wouldn't be able to use with the iPad anyway, as it doesn't have a port for them.

On the flip side, the screen is supposed to be really good and you can watch HD movies on the iPad. Although you do have to get them from iTunes. Ker-ching.

Despite the criticism, The Guardian reported today that British retailers are wrangling for exclusive rights to stock the iPad, looking to strike the sort of exclusivity deal that O2 originally sorted on the iPhone. So it won't be long before you can head into a shop, have a play and make your own mind up.

Whatever its purpose you can be sure this incarnation of the iPad is just the beginning and that in no time at all, there will be more  fully featured iPads rolling out from under the Apple tree.

(Zander Grinfeld)