So here I sit in a fancy hotel room in Austin, watching Paranormal Activity, which is shaping up to be a scary movie, and feeling irritated that the supposedly world-class fitness center in this hotel closes at 9:00 p.m.  Meanwhile people in Days Inns across America are happily running on lesser treadmills in non-world-class exercise rooms.  That are open.

Compounding my irritation is the fact that after deciding to freeze my butt off and run outside, I found the nearby trails to be pitch black- not a light anywhere.  It was hard to stay upright and on the trails walking.  Running would have been impossible.

It’s annoying.

Sort of like reading and responding to email on my laptop.  It’s too small to create a desktop monitor or keyboard experience, and too big to easily place in my lap or use as a quasi-handheld.  It’s just not a fulfilling experience.

I wonder if the iPad will fill this gap I have fallen into?

It could.  After all, much of the work we do on laptops- reading email, surfing the web, listening to music, etc.- doesn’t require a desktop-like experience.  And, again, how much worse could it really be than trying to hold this laptop and deal with this tiny keyboard?  I can tell you this- I can type emails much faster on my iPhone than this tiny, non-ergonomic keyboard.

For me to fully embrace the iPad, I need three things to happen.

One, I need Microsoft to recognize the huge market for Office applications.  As I have said a million times, Google Docs suck epicly.  Document intensive users are still bound to Word.  Microsoft should not give conflicted users another reason to try to free themselves of Office.  Rather, make it easy to stay hooked by creating some sort of Word app for the iPad.

Two, I need the iPad (and ATT) to permit the iPad to do what the iPhone still can’t do- tether.  That way I can dump my ATT wireless broadband card, and apply that money to 3G service on the iPad.  The lack of standard ports on the iPad doesn’t bode well for this, but I can hope.

Three, I need the rumors about a camera on the iPad to, miraculously, be true.  Maybe I won’t use the camera that much, but philosophically I can’t get past the lack of one.

If that happens, I’m in.  What are your must-have features?

By the way, Paranormal Activity is seriously scary. . .