In 2004 I purchased myself Dell Axim X30 for less than 200 pounds in UK. This had SD slot, USB cable and multitasking. Nowadays this device costs less than 50 pounds. It's still good for music, plays MPEG videos, to read PDF documents and had Excel and Word with it.
It had WiFi and Bluetooth.
Opera Browser worked fine with it allowing a much better web experience than Microsoft IE.
I'm somehow surprised that Apple thinks someone will buy their new iPad for $500?
For $995 you can get a decent MacBook which can be used as professional music recording studio or professional video editing suite. Why someone pays half of the price of professional equipment to read eBooks?