I was surprised that iPad doesn't really print to anything, which makes it pretty much useless for anyone wanting to get one as a replacement for a PC.

Eh? There are any number of ways to get an iPad to print to pretty much any printer you like. I use printopia on my Mac. There are equally good solutions for Windows. It's not difficult.

Jon

So in order to print something, you need to have a computer?

I could live quite happily in a college environment with just my £130 netbook and a £30 ink-jet plugged in by USB when I need it. Or I could transfer it via SD card since so many printers have slots for those these days.

Not always the case: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4356
I suspect that list will grow.

Hopefully the quality and prices will improve too - the least expensive one I could see was £80 and got dire reviews:

http://store.apple.com/uk/reviews/H1573 ... jE1OTg3MzA




Of course a lot of people are idiots that shouldn't be allowed near a PC, but I thought Apple's products were supposed to be easy to use. If I was them, I'd think twice about listing a product that elicits such reviews.

Equally, people said:






As a rule, I tend to dismiss the reviews that are either 1 or 5 star.
People are generally only motivated to post a review if it's OMG IT'S FULL OF WIN or OMG IT'S FULL OF FAIL, and one's as useless as the other.
The real value lies in the reviews that are somewhere in the middle, I find.

When you compare that product to others, the percentage of unhappy customers is incredibly high. I generally find that when 50% of reviews are bad, there is genuinely something wrong with the product.

Take the similarly specified (but not wireless) HP Deskjet 2050 which is available from just £20 but has 100% positive reviews out of the 55 on Amazon.

So, cheap netbook works great with cheap printer vs Expensive iPad half-works with expensive printer. That's the thing I hate most about Apple kit - after paying a fortune for the initial item, you then have to pay a fortune for everything to go with it that you'd normally expect for free.

I think that their is an app called Air print. Though I have not installed it or used it.

The bare fact is, to own an iPad you need a computer. They won't function until they've been synced at least once at least. And while dropbox and such allow you to shuffle files back and forth, it's much easier to move large lumps of media - movies & etc - by USB. In reality, I don't think iPads are autonomous devices as it stands. Maybe iOS 5 and iCloud will change that. I guess we'll find out soon enough if they will or not.


You are being assessed in a way that is somewhat behind the times I feel. Most of the assignments the students do at our place can be submitted entirely electronically. We still have printing facilities and students can submit on paper if they wish, but it's only a matter of time before that goes the way of the quill. I actually have two printers at home, I haven't used either of them in weeks. I doubt I've printed anything on more than half a dozen occasions in the last year. If want to give someone a document, I email them an attachment. If I want to show someone photographs, I either use my iPad or I send them a link to Flickr or my MobileMe gallery. In my life, paper is becoming increasingly obsolete.

By the by, I owned a netbook, with allegedly the best keyboard on any such device that existed at the time, before I got an iPad. Even so, I'd rather bite off my own face than type anything longer than a short letter on that keyboard. Wouldn't want to type an essay or dissertation on an iPad either to be honest. You're putting a use case for which neither an iPad nor your avowed alternative are anything like a decent solution. if I was a student, had anything longer than a page to type and I possessed only a netbook or an iPad, I'd go to the college and use one of their proper computers with proper keyboards instead.


Jon

In that case, you could spend about £55 and get a decent keyboard and 19" screen to dock with your netbook when you were in your room - a cheaper and more usable solution than most large-screen laptops and easier than going outside

It is what is inside that counts. If it is Atom based, it is a netbook, and generally cheap. If it has a Core processor, then it is a subnotebook and costs much more - the general build quality of a subnotebook is also much higher.

As a side note, Gareth just tweeted:


Is he ill?