That's my hunch as well. Of course, there are certainly situations in which those extra features might be necessary, but they are in .01% of the case situations that the average iPad user is going to need it for.
It sounds like such an old wife tale that people kept saying they can't play video formats. There are a number of ways of doing this. I have numerous friends who thinks this is the case, but it really is just a myth. There are even so many apps that pretends to be like a USB drive.
For format issues, both AirVideo (http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html) and ZumoCast (http://www.zumocast.com/) provide ways to stream data from your primary computer with 'live' transcoding of the data into formats that iOS devices can play without any additional codecs.
My suggestion is buy the new iPad. Play with it. You'll either realize that your concerns don't exist once you have the device, or they matter more than anything else. If the latter, wipe it and sell it. You'll get great resale value for it, even a year later. If the new iPad is as hard to get as the iPad 2 was when it first came out, you might even manage to break even.
Also: WMV, seriously? Where you get those from?