Just get one.

As the ultimate early adopter, having got mine on iPad Day, April 3, 2010, there is always the risk that anything I write about the iPad is tainted by a refusal to admit that it has serious flaws. Egg-on-face is not a particular favorite here any more than it is in your home.

And yes, I have written almost as much about this device as I did about the 5D which rocked my world to the core. That’s because it is every bit as revolutionary as that now classic Canon camera.

But I have no need to lead you up the garden path of denial. Rather, I would prefer to guide you to the road of enlightenment and realization. What the full frame sensor did for DSLRs the iPad will do for photography and the graphic arts. There is no longer any need to excuse the silly little display on your phone or camera when showing someone your pictures or sharing you ideas. You display them, instead, in glorious, high definition color, with your choice of sound track to jolly things along.

Lest you continue to think I’m full of it, let me tell you the single worst thing about the iPad. First, I should explain that I manage money for a living. I cannot think of a more data intensive occupation and in a turbulent world where emotions and markets (the same thing) can turn on a dime, it’s truly a 7 by 24 business. The money manager is always hungry for information. That means that most sunny mornings you will find me walking the resident Border Terrier a couple of blocks down to Broadway where we hang out at one of the many street places happy to serve us a snack and a coffee. It’s natural therapy which does much to improve the workday. Naturally, almost all the snack places have wifi (this is Broadway, Burlingame, Northern California, not Broadway, Pig Heaven, Arkansas) and the first thing I do is start reading on the iPad while waiting for service. Well, it’s getting awfully difficult to do that as before you know it I am surrounded by fellow diners of all ages and have to go into demonstration mode. So my productivity drops while Apple’s sales soar. That is the very worst thing about the iPad experience.

Still, if that’s the very worst you can say about the iPad, you can bet that the shock of the new will pass quickly enough when everyone has one. And judging by this, that should be any day now:

I suspect that over the next year or two, taxpaying US households will have several iPads – one for each bedroom, one for the home theater, one in the workshop, one for the kitchen, one for the au pair, etc. Non-taxpaying ones will have one provided at no cost by working people. Any business dependent on record keeping, diagnosis, analysis, retrieval, sharing will have many. Medicine, law, manufacturing, sales, science, engineering, publishing, teaching, photography, architecture, real estate, the military, design and production – all will become dependent on these keyboard free, inexpensive tools to get things done better and faster than those without. As GPS models proliferate, a whole new range of location sensitive applications will appear as if by magic, leveraging the device’s power and utility. As speech recognition improves, the last vestiges of need for a keyboard will disappear. Have you ever thought how much productivity is destroyed by the simple act of typing? Libraries will disappear (we can develop the real estate for profitable use) and Weyerhaeuser‘s business will halve as the need for dead trees falls. It’s not just that we will not be making paper books anymore. The new frugality will see smaller homes and no bookcases. Both the homes and the bookcases are made from …. yes, you guessed it!

Make no mistake, the first mover advantage enjoyed by Apple with the iPad is non-trivial. Heavily patented, it has already seen two mediocre would be competitors fold – HP’s Slate and Microsoft’s Courier – both before a single one was sold. Of course the one great application MSFT had which would be a natural for the iPad, the Encarta encyclopedia with interactive content, was discontinued a few months back. Such is the Beast of Redmond.

So for those of you holding out because you have to pay the “Apple premium” or whatever silly reason you have come up with, good luck to you. I have no time to look over my shoulder while I do my job, and my clients thank me mightily for the unfair advantage which I enjoy over you.

Comments on this post are open unless, that is, you are in Arkansas, or ArrghCanSore as they pronounce it down there.

Disclosure: No AAPL position.