Back in my tech days, I used to attend the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And it was there, in 1999, as I was walking past the smaller booths towards the back of the show, that I came across a little Canadian company called Research in Motion. The RIM booth wasn’t pulling many people in, but for some reason I stopped to check out their product. It was called a Blackberry.

The pager looked just like the Motorola two-ways that were all the rage at the time, but this one didn’t send pages – instead, it sent and received email. Crazy!

I looked at the thing. I played with it a little bit. Then, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I plunked down a credit card, and bought one right there.

In those days, I was still a student, and I knew better than to show something that dorky to college friends. But I was also running a company, and I made it down to New York City two or three times a week for meetings. The people I was meeting were largely in the finance world. And I’d show them the Blackberry.

Invariably, their reaction was the same: “I’d never carry something like that. Not in a million years.”

A few years later, when the iPod came out, I convinced my parents to buy me one as a birthday gift. At that point, people told me similar things: it would never catch on; they would never buy one; shouldn’t I have asked for a Nomad instead?

And now, as I eagerly await the 3G-enabled version of the iPad dropping later this month, I keep hearing the same complaints. That people aren’t buying one. That I shouldn’t bother. That it doesn’t do anything, does too much, is too big, too small. That, in short, it’s an overpriced and essentially pointless toy.

But the thing is, they’re all wrong. I don’t know why I think so. I’ve barely even had the chance to play around with an iPad directly. But I’m sure. The iPad is the future. And I’m looking forward, in five years, when the next big thing hits, to gloating about this one, too.