I have been looking for a light weight laptop for school. The primary uses will be surfing, notes taking, writing papers, online chatting, trivial games and occasionally watch some videos. The budget is around $500. This is mainly to replace my ancient thinkpad 240x, which has mobile pentium III 500mhz, 192M ram, 10 inch screen and weigh about 3lbs.
I was very impressed by ipad's form factor when I first saw it in store and was almost ready to make a purchase. The battery life is suppose to be amazing too. However, after spending some time with it in store and reading reviews, I can't seem to justify the purchase.
1. The on-screen keyboard is nice, but still not a physical keyboard especially since you have to hold the ipad using one hand and type using the other. The curved back doesn't help either despite making the ipad look thinner. But the most annoying thing is that auto-correct doesn't work in pages. They mark misspelled words with red lines instead. I asked the girl in the store about it and she tried in vain to type something. Finally she suggested a keyboard attachment, but that's another $80 and another thing I have to lug around. I honestly don't understand why apple wouldn't give me an option to turn auto-correct on or off. Better yet, map the keyboard to the fingers. The 240x is ancient, but it's 95% keyboard + trackpoint is much more comfortable to use.
2. No multi-tasking. This is mainly an issue for chatting since I usually keep a chat window open in the background. I also need to be able to see two applications at once. I don't think it's possible even with the new IOS 4.0. The 240x has trouble with multi-tasking too due to the small memory size, but at least it can support a chat window + a browser window + a mp3 player.
3. Slow web speed. This one really shocked me. Safari is suppose to be much faster than Firefox and ipad's hardware is certainly light years ahead the 240x. Yet the 240x beats ipad in sunspider benchmark using firefox! Chrome is even faster although 240x's puny memory can't really handle more than a couple of tabs. Page rendering is also no faster than 240x. All the reviewers keep on saying how much faster ipad is comparing to iphone 3Gs, but who cares. Some people argue that sunspider is useless, but javascript is important for applications like google doc, which leads to my next point.
4. No Google doc in browser! I know there are applications for it, but google doc is not an online disk. It's meant for the browser. I need it to be consistent cross multiple machines. On the 240x, Firefox becomes sluggish when editing massive spreadsheet, but at least it works.
5. No firefox. Safari is nice, but no tabbed browsing really kills it. I also don't know whether it can match firefox's extensibility. e.g. noscript.
6. No Flash support. Flash is a major issue for the 240x. Youtube is basically unwatchable. However, ipad does not support it at all. HTML5 is nice on the paper, but unlike youtube, the majority of flash video site I access will not adopt html5 any time soon.
7. Can't be used on the bus. Another major issue I have with 240x is that it is difficult to see outside. From what I can see, the ipad is only worse.
In the end, despite its long battery life, sleek design and polished look, I just don't think ipad can replace my 240x. On the other hand, I couldn't find an affordable netbook that suits my needs either, so I ended up keeping my little 240x. I have XP+Firefox+Office. It's sluggish at times and the battery is dying, but it does what it needs to do grumpily.
So what do you think? Maybe I am just not the targeted audience for the ipad? Or maybe I just need to adapt to a new way of using computers?
I was very impressed by ipad's form factor when I first saw it in store and was almost ready to make a purchase. The battery life is suppose to be amazing too. However, after spending some time with it in store and reading reviews, I can't seem to justify the purchase.
1. The on-screen keyboard is nice, but still not a physical keyboard especially since you have to hold the ipad using one hand and type using the other. The curved back doesn't help either despite making the ipad look thinner. But the most annoying thing is that auto-correct doesn't work in pages. They mark misspelled words with red lines instead. I asked the girl in the store about it and she tried in vain to type something. Finally she suggested a keyboard attachment, but that's another $80 and another thing I have to lug around. I honestly don't understand why apple wouldn't give me an option to turn auto-correct on or off. Better yet, map the keyboard to the fingers. The 240x is ancient, but it's 95% keyboard + trackpoint is much more comfortable to use.
2. No multi-tasking. This is mainly an issue for chatting since I usually keep a chat window open in the background. I also need to be able to see two applications at once. I don't think it's possible even with the new IOS 4.0. The 240x has trouble with multi-tasking too due to the small memory size, but at least it can support a chat window + a browser window + a mp3 player.
3. Slow web speed. This one really shocked me. Safari is suppose to be much faster than Firefox and ipad's hardware is certainly light years ahead the 240x. Yet the 240x beats ipad in sunspider benchmark using firefox! Chrome is even faster although 240x's puny memory can't really handle more than a couple of tabs. Page rendering is also no faster than 240x. All the reviewers keep on saying how much faster ipad is comparing to iphone 3Gs, but who cares. Some people argue that sunspider is useless, but javascript is important for applications like google doc, which leads to my next point.
4. No Google doc in browser! I know there are applications for it, but google doc is not an online disk. It's meant for the browser. I need it to be consistent cross multiple machines. On the 240x, Firefox becomes sluggish when editing massive spreadsheet, but at least it works.
5. No firefox. Safari is nice, but no tabbed browsing really kills it. I also don't know whether it can match firefox's extensibility. e.g. noscript.
6. No Flash support. Flash is a major issue for the 240x. Youtube is basically unwatchable. However, ipad does not support it at all. HTML5 is nice on the paper, but unlike youtube, the majority of flash video site I access will not adopt html5 any time soon.
7. Can't be used on the bus. Another major issue I have with 240x is that it is difficult to see outside. From what I can see, the ipad is only worse.
In the end, despite its long battery life, sleek design and polished look, I just don't think ipad can replace my 240x. On the other hand, I couldn't find an affordable netbook that suits my needs either, so I ended up keeping my little 240x. I have XP+Firefox+Office. It's sluggish at times and the battery is dying, but it does what it needs to do grumpily.
So what do you think? Maybe I am just not the targeted audience for the ipad? Or maybe I just need to adapt to a new way of using computers?
. My laptop and netbook doesn't get used at all anymore. iPad and Desktop combo work great.
