There much more wrong with Apple iPads than their nonstandard audio jacks, eg the terribly closed appstore, lack of USB port, no way to manage files (except by buying some file manager app), etc. Still, it has some benefits, eg the huge multitouch screen, which I can use as a piano keyboard - I even paid 15 euro for a great app in which I can compose MIDI files.
I also have a Sony VAIO P series, which is very nice and has many of the advantages the Pandora has. It runs Ubuntu Linux out of the box, has an SD slot, a nice keyboard, nice cpu etc. Still, the Pandora offers more in my opinion.
- the VAIO is about twice as expensive, and twice as heavy and large. Still very small, but not like the Pandora. It is slightly too big to be used as a a handheld, too small for your lap, so typically you use a table.
- it has a very impressive 1600x768 screen, but to be honest, that resolution is just silly for an 8" screen. The human eye does have its limitations, so you end up using very big font sizes and wasting precious cpu/gpu power on rendering pixels you can barely see
- the battery life! It really sucks on the VAIO, even though I have spent quite some time on installing experimental kernels that make full use of lowpower cpu features. When I first had the VAIO, in 2009, I could get maybe 2-3 hours out of it, maybe 4 if I would literally do nothing. By now, I'm lucky to get 45 minutes out of it, and if charging was too long ago, it won't even have enough juice left to boot up. This is a real killer.
- no touch screen, no hardware volume control, no gaming controls
), so you'll probably get it within the next 6 weeks 
