[quote="phantombudgie"]iPie.

I'd get one if I had a lot of spare cash though, purely because of my Shiny Thing addiction.[quote]
+1
Need = No
want = Yes Its Shiny my preciousss

I agree. I could quite happily wait till a later generation. I still have not bought an iPhone though that is definitely next on my list, one of the 4G versions out in July.

That's my point. It may well be a valuable tool for a very small section of users.

However, as far as I can see, for the majority it's simply the latest volley in the shiny-gadget fashion arms-race. IMO tablets, cloud computing and 3D cinema come together to make the emperor's new three-piece suit.

Make sure you trial the netbook and reading software first - I found the overall 'eBook & netbook' experience pretty horrible, and I'm an eBook fan. To be fair it was a particularly cheap n' cheerful netbook - nasty screen, clunky OS etc... but I found it particularly ill-suited for reading 'cos the keyboard was always getting in the way - there's whole keyboard in front of you and all you use are the cursor keys for page turns...

Dedicated e-ink readers are better - great battery life, but they're still very clunky and they need a lot of light; I struggle reading mine sometimes with normal room lighting. My favourite reader's an iPhone/iPod Touch with Kiindle or Stanza software, and I expect the iPad to replace that as my reader of choice, as well as hopefully replacing my work notebook (that's a Moleskine or Cartesio notebook, not Asus or EeePc btw) - though if that doesn't work out then I can make good use of it as a large iPod Touch/ereader/personal movie viewer/TV/sofa surfer etc.. etc..

Cheers, Pete.

Thanks Pete I actually meant *writing* "the book" rather than reading, the e-book world isn't attractive enough to me at the moment to warrant any technology money being spent on it. I'm writing a book and it's the type where ideas come to me at unusual times and I want to have a portable netbook-type affair that I can use to type them up at my next opportunity...when I get to work...home...to a coffee place etc etc

Seems overkill when a spiral-bound notebook and biro would work nicely...

You wouldn't say that if you saw me writing

Ditto, but then I consider it worthwhile practice - even if it only means I can write cheques that a clearly legible.

They're around £200 now (£230 will get you an 11 incher with good battery life, madam ), and there's also refurbed ones online that you may get slightly cheaper...

Allow me to make this topic a bit more interesting.

That's funny the JooJoo unfortunately has turned out to be a complete failure, a shame though (no sarcasm there)

And funnier.

Ah! OK, in which case the keyboard might get a bit more use...



Actually, I think it's a bit sad. A couple of years back when it was called the crunchpad, a simple web-tablet for $200 seemed like a pretty cool idea. Even with the price doubling (and more) it didn't seem totally crazy - let's not forget the pundits were widely touting the iPad as having a $999 price tag at launch. But yes, taking pre-orders the month before Apple is rumoured to be making an product announcement in the same category is a bit optimistic; then again, what else could they do?

Pete

I've made the executive decision that I do enough writing at work, I don't need to do it for fun as well. After my degree I vowed I wouldn't write any more than I absolutely had to. I type much faster than I write, and better. In addition, when getting ideas down, I need to be able to do it fast, and typing is the way to go