Microsoft founder Bill Gates apparently isn’t among the soon-to-be iPad faithful.

It’s a given that the iPad’s debut on January 27 probably didn’t live up to the crescendo of hype in the weeks prior, and most people won’t know for sure if they want one until they put their hands on it in late March.

Brent Schlender of BNet’s Perspective got a chance to ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ longtime rival, former Microsoft exec Bill Gates, what he thought of the iPad. As Schlender points out, Gates has been a proponent of the tablet computer for quite some time and was actually in awe of the iPhone when it was unveiled in 2007.

“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard -- in other words a netbook -- will be the mainstream on that,” Gates told the BNet blog.

“So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’  It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”

We’re not sure if Gates is aware that Apple is indeed offering an iPad dock with keyboard, or even that you can use any Bluetooth keyboard with the device. After all, for such a media-centric device, would you really want to take up so much real estate with a real keyboard in the first place? Time will tell.

(Image courtesy of PMPToday.com)