Hi all,

I've decided that considering I have just under two years left of my funding, I might as well get with the times and update my technology (not an excuse to buy new shiny things, honest). I've decided to buy a new desktop pc which is what I do all my work on, seeing as mine at the moment takes 20 minutes to start up and has no working CD drive. I think I've found a good deal so I'll get that today.

However, I also want to buy a netbook or IPad for surfing and maybe a small bit of work. This would only be used in the evening/weekends, when I'm sat in the lounge with hubby and want to have a mooch online, maybe to check emails etc and read a few articles. Am I best with a netbook or Ipad?

I love netbooks but I'm not sure how fast they are or whether they're any good. But then Ipads are much more expensive, I'm not sure I'd get enough use out of them, and I'm not so keen on touch screen (I have a touch screen phone which drives me up the wall).

Any advice/recommendations would be much appreciated!

Also, are there any other cool gadgets you have that I could use as an excuse to buy because they'd be 'helpful'?

You've answered your own question really. You love netbooks, you don't like touch screens and your only reservation is that they might not be as fast as an iPad? You can get them faster than an iPad. The only reason for getting an iPad is that it's a bit more shiny. Shiny thing make better?

I laughed when I saw the keyboard adaptor you can get for iPad style devices. That's basically a massively expensive net book with limited functionality that ties you to apple for the life of the product...

In summary: Get a netbook :-)

I have a netbook and it far exceeded my expectations. It's getting a little slow now after nearly 4 years but I have been pleasantly surprised at what I could do with it (e.g. running statistical analysis software via a remote desktop). It's still more than adequate for surfing and downloading/reading/editing documents.

I confess I'm a bit skeptical about i-Products. Yes, they are beautiful and yes they do lots of 'cool' things but I think there are plenty of other options out there that probably provide the same or superior functionality for the stuff you actually want/need to do. For the amount of money you would spend on an iPad you could get a really good netbook.

Thanks both of you! I am definitely going to go for a netbook, just not sure which one now! Hazyjane, do you know how much memory yours has? A lot have 1GB, others have 4GB but are obviously more expensive. I'm just wondering whether 1GB is enough for it to go at a fair speed.

Also, I've heard that some webpages open all wierd on netbooks, does any have experience of this?

Don't have it to hand, but I have a Samsung NC10 which seems to have 1GB according to the specs online. It's served me well enough.

Not really had any problems with web pages loading. Maybe it's a model specific issue but the only problem I've had is that if I catch the trackpad in the wrong way sometimes it zooms in/out rather than scrolling, but that's a minor point.

Happy shopping!

Thankyou! I've been googling and the samsung NC10, NC110 AND NF110 all seem to have really good reviews, but the first two seem to be out of stock everywhere (I think they've been discontinued), so I think I'm going for the NF110 8-)

Hi,

As per your requirement notebook is better option. For your more information you may visit :- http://www.notebookreview.com/
It will definitely help you to get better one.