Netbook versus iPad

My daughter managed to break the "E" key on my laptop, and we were going away on a business trip to the mainland. It seemed like a perfect time to justify my long awaited purchase of an iPad.

And then I thought about it.

There were several drawbacks to using an iPad as our means of staying in touch with the business while we were away.

• The lack of USB ports meant we couldn't download our photos from the cameras or Flip video
• It isn't compatible with Livewriter, which we use to post to our sites
• I wasn't comfortable about using a touch keyboard, so if I went the iPad route, I'd need to buy a real one, which meant more expense, weight and bulk.

In the end, I decided a netbook was better for the job I needed to do, so after some research, we went with the Asus Eee PC, which is simply tiny! In fact, it's so small, it evens fits into my "man bag."

The Eee PC ships with Windows 7 starter, and runs fantastically. It boots up in less than 30 seconds, and has so far run faultlessly. The wifi has an incredibly strong signal, and even picks up our lounge based router from the office - in the past, I've only ever seen a Mac do that.

The keyboard is pretty much full sized, apart from the lack of a number keypad, and has a really good solid feel to it. As it uses Windows, we were able to load Livewriter and Open Office onto it, and the two USB ports meant it was easy to connect to any other peripherals, as well as our pen drives.

Where the little netbook really came into it's own was during our presentations. The laptop that a colleague had brought along as the main presentation machine really struggled, so we used the VGA out (via a little adaptor which is integrated into the casing) to connect the Eee PC up to the projector, and the audio out to the sound system. It not only ran the whole presentation using it's on board graphics card, but it delivered impressive sound quality and was even able to stream video via the internet. I would never have imagined that it could cope, but it did admirably.

I think the netbook is one of my best buys ever - it's so easy to power up and start typing from your lap, and as a back up when things go wrong, it proved a lifesaver.

I highly recommend it to you. And when I can eventually justify buying one, I'll do a side by side comparison with the iPad!