Recently I was one of the guys that were debating on buying an iPad or a netbook in order to have a mini system that I can use on the road or for some small tasks. After going to the Apple store and playing around with the iPad, I decided that it is a pretty toy but not for me. While the idea is great and the integration is at a quality I come to expect from Apple, it also has a ton of the problems that Apple continues to force on people. Below is a list of the things that kept me from buying an iPad:
• No Ethernet
• No USB, so preventing an Ethernet dongle
• iTunes only
• Can’t just copy files to the device
Instead, I ended up buying an el cheepo Acer Aspire One (hdd version) for ~$300. While the netbook came with Windows 7 Starter, I never booted into it and spammed
Since I do not use KDE or Gnome on any of my systems if I can take the time to fix that issue, the first thing that I do when booting into the new installation is to install either Fluxbox or Awesome though usually I will install both and switch them out depending on what activities I am planning on doing when I log in. On my desktops, I pretty much stick to awesome, but on a laptop it is sometimes nice to use Fluxbox when traveling or presenting.