I will be in line for one. Yes, it is not a laptop and it is not an iPhone, but I don't think it is trying to be either. I have a laptop and an iPhone and I often wished that my laptop was lighter and easier to lug around and often wish that my iPhone was bigger and had more real estate. The iPad is clearly targeted at me
Lots of people wish it was so much more than what it is. Don't get me wrong, I wish that it could make dinner for me and wash my car too! All those other features would be great but you can't please everyone, you can't have your cake and eat it. It isn't a revolutionary device but it does have its uses. I imagine one day university students will be toting this guys around instead of a backpack full of heavy textbooks, and business people reading these on the train to work instead of newspapers, doctors lugging these around with access to records and xrays instead of those clipboards.
Regarding the whole no multitasking and no flash thingy, if I had to guess, I would guess that Apple has a team of engineers trying to come up with a way to achieve these things without sacrificing too much of the other things they believe in, like battery power for one. Both of those can drain the battery significantly and I for one appreciate the batter life out of my iPhone at the cost of multitasking. However, I do agree that on a device like the iPad you really do *need* multitasking. Listening to music while typing up a report in iWorks.. duh! Again, I hope that apple is just trying to engineer a way to allow multitasking in a more sane manner than typical implementations.
In the end iPad 1.0 is Apples way of testing the waters I think; making sure there is a market for it and seeing where those markets are. iPad 2.0 will be much more WOW I'm sure.