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I own an iPad1 (which I recently gave to my dad for a "personal video player" (I load it with foreign films and burn in oversize subtitles because he's almost deaf). He also uses it for eMail and a bit of web surfing. He's almost 97 and has lost most of his technology skills. The iPad lets him do stuff that he's forgotten how to do on his Mac.
The iPad's iBooks app is marvelous. Occasionally I run into an ePub that iBooks can't handle but Bluefire Reader can open it. There are many ePub and PDF reader apps (most are free). The first app I bought (and I still think it's the best) is GoodReader which can open text, Word, PDF and many other formats. It can also facilitate the sideloading of documents into GoodReader which you may then "open with..." some other compatible app on the iPad. Don't like what it looks like in that "other" app? Delete the file from there and "open with..." some other app.
There are apps that permit annotation and highlighting (GoodReader, for one) but it doesn't do ePub (yet).
GoodReader lets you ftp into your Mac or PC and select the file(s) or folders you wish to copy (in either direction). DropBox also works but that's going to the cloud (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
iTunes is used to transfer files but, as I indicated earlier, GoodReader lets you ftp files over -or- (and this is the case with many iPad apps), each app will have its own "drop" area within iTunes for you to add files to or from the iPad. iTunes will not stop the transfer of files in this "sideloaded" manner. Don't worry about Apple stopping you from doing things you want. You can even jailbreak the iPad (although I'll let you google that phrase to see what can be done once that's accomplished).
re: e-ink. I own a Sony 650 and, while the screen is wonderful is bright daylight (or even in open shade like my covered back patio), reading in bed requires more light than I currently have on my night table. The iPad, though unreadable in broad daylight and open shade, is perfect indoors because of the backlighting (which may be adjusted as you require). The thing to remember about backlighting is that is needs to be no more than 3x as bright (or no less than 1/3 as bright) as the surrounding area. Example: On an airplane at night, I adjust the screen brightness way down (or switch to night mode which gives me light text on a dark background). Don't be misled by the anti-backlight trolls.
File organization: Every app has its own sandbox. If you download an ePub to iBooks, it isn't accessible to any other app. However, if you eMail an ePub to your iPad, you may choose which app to open it with (and you may do this multiple times with that ePub); accordingly, the ePub is copied to the target app's sandbox (each app has its own sandbox).
There is no "Desktop" or "Documents" folder in which all documents are found.
Dictionary reference from a PDF you're reading - I'm not sure about this but I'd bet $50 there's an app for that.
Enormous PDFs might prove a bit slow. I break my PDF textbooks into 10MB (more or less) chapters. These are page images (no text, just png's or jpg's glommed together as a pdf).
Read while charging - Absolutely; no problem!
Videos - easy as pie. I use Handbrake or, if there need to be subtitles, Submerge. I also have a Turbo264 so I can use that for hardware-powered encoding. On my Core i7 iMac, Handbrake usually gives me about 140-170 frames per second transcoding from AVI to H264/MP4. There are many apps that can do the transcoding automatically if you don't want to tweak settings.
Headphones - yes, no problem. 3.5mm plug (computer-size, not phone-size).
Hope this helps.
Oh, by the way, I mentioned that my iPad is now with my Dad. I'll probably order the iPad 2 because the "always-on" video-out capability of the new iPad2 will permit me to use it in my classroom with ALL apps (whereas the older iPad1 model requires apps to be specifically written to send video out the dock connector port...and there weren't all that many). If you don't require that feature (and don't require 1080 video out to an HDMI-equipped TV), then save your money and get the discounted iPad1 (or an extra $50 by buying a refurb from Apple and then get the AppleCare to extend the warranty to two years).
More questions? Ask away.
Barry
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