http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/10/25 ... -netbooks/

I can absolutely see where he's coming from in terms of innovation, but to me that's always been pretty obvious, and applies generally anyway. I would say though that I know far more people with netbooks than tablets, and who would currently buy a netbook over a tablet any day of the week...

I'm not sure I go with it. The point is netbooks are/were actually pretty rubbish laptops. But they were all pretty much the same. In fact most of them were pretty much identical and they were all, well, a massive compromise.

Tablet's aren't a compromise. They are what they are. They don't have rubbish keyboards because most of them don't have any keyboards at all. They have screens that are small, but the stuff you use on them is optimised for that screen as oppose to windows on a netbook which sometimes didn't work at all - quite a lot of windows apps assume you have at least a 1024*768 screen, which gave netbooks a major issue.

Fundamentally, netbooks are a transition product. They are black & white TV, gas street lights. They came along to fill a niche until something better comes along. Something did. I can't immediately see what is 'better' than a tablet to fill that ultra-portable convenience device niche. Ultraportable laptops seem to be taking more of the laptop market than the tablet market and unless phones get really big, they aren't in the same category really. And if phones did get really big, wouldn't they just have become tablets?

This is why I bought the HP Mininote. It's 1280x768 and even though it's over two years old now, I still love it to bits. Fantastic for the £130 or whatever I paid for it.

I think tablets are here to stay, and certainly IMO incomparable to like low-power netbooks, many of which weren't up to any serious browsing. I'd never pick a netbook over a ultraportable laptop, really can't see the point, there are very inexpensive laptops around now which make netbooks very poor value for money.

I don't own one... yet... but can see their uses, and may wait until iPad 3 arrives before taking the plunge, although might treat us to 2 at Christmas... I personally could use it to show clients photographs, systems / screen shots and develop front ends to databases using FileMaker Go. Then personally sitting around the house browsing with the family would be very useful, and when I need the keyboard and power of a full blown PC I'd use one... I've also seen tablets used with young children in an education setting, and it's very impressive how quickly they can use a tablet over a computer.