My laptop died.

*sob*

While I have a desktop it's not very practical and is hidden away in a little used (freezing cold) room.
SO I'm in the market for a new portable device .. really I only use it for zipping around on the internet and maybe playing around with some photos. Would an iPad be good enough for that kind of thing?

I haven't actually seen one working (ipad) but do have an ipod touch .. is it just a bigger version of that? Do you still use itunes to sync it with or is it a different setup?

Decisions decisions!

I have to admit that the 'i' world is leaving me behind. I just don't need an iProduct and therefore haven't used one. For that reason, I'd probably go for a laptop but maybe others will point out the benefits of going 'i'.

There was a story on the news yesterday that most people who bought an iPad simply to have as a computer are finding it doesn't do everything a laptop does. For example, iPads can't play flash content, so a lot of websites that show video you can't access. Also, it's not something I would like to type on daily unless I had an extra keyboard... And once you get the extra keyboard, you might as well just have gotten a laptop.

The iPad is great if you just want something for a couple days of computing if you go on a trip, to watch videos you have in iTunes or another app, or playing games.

I have an iPod touch, an iPhone, an iPad, a Macbook Pro and a Windows computer. I've found I don't use the Windows computer, I use my laptop. The iPhone I use a lot, the iPad I'll use if I just want to curl up on the couch or if I'm going somewhere I don't want to take my laptop with me. I rarely use the iPod touch since I got the iPhone, and I'll probably leave that for the baby to use in a few years to play games on.

There is an option called a Netbook for sale in the USA. It looks like a laptop (Tad smaller due to smaller display) that is designed for just what you're seeking, portable internet access. You can go hard wire or wifi with it, I think, but you do have to have an account to use it (Same as ipod and any other internet device) It doesn't have an onboard hard drive, but then all your software and data can be stored on line (at a risk) anyway. These are a step between the ipod (an iphone which I think is a fancy all options capable kindle) and a laptop. The ads come out in tomorrow's paper if you can wait a day for a brand name and model. Don't get too cold reading this in that storage room.
Wait a sec, I still have last Sunday's flyers hanging around. From Comp USA there are a couple of Sony Notebooks, a Dell Tablet PC (The notebooks are 13-15inch diag LCD) From BEST BUY: Anything with a keyboard is being called a laptop while the ones with touch screen built-in key software are called Tabs, Tablets and readers and are from Samsung, Blackberry and Barnes&Noble. That's probably going to be a big factor for you: Can you handle typing on a touchscreen or not? They may be nice for limited texting but for full access interaction from a keyboard like this, you may want to stay with the keyboarded laptop variations.

For the Netbooks, I've read that if you really need to do anything more than go online, it's cumbersome and won't handle even very graphics-intensive websites very well as they don't have good memory or graphics cards. If I have a certain amount to spent and can get either a netbook or a cheap laptop, I'd go with the cheap laptop without hesitation.

Thanks for the replies
There is just too much choice out there now, I find! lol
I've been looking around and it's just mind boggling. I think I'll probably just stick to a laptop but for the moment I'm actually enjoying NOT having a computer there all the time. We'll see how long that lasts for though

I have a netbook for when I go away, it drives me round the bend with the tiny screen and keyboard, it isn't something you would want to use daily. A friend has the ipod and I played with it and that drove me scatty too. I prefer a fullsize keyboard and a mouse.

I think the lesser of the evils would be the laptop.

I see your posting is "In Re: Copago" which means your rovbot spider didn't just tag on the end of the thread but rode off an earlier response to a Copago posting. I think I'm feeling that you read either Sue's or TW's posts list to grab one to swing in on.

Edit: This posting and Copago's below were in reply to a spam posting from our oft seen friend who vends cell phone cases. That post was deleted.

Why bother replying to spam? More than likely they just pressed reply to the original post and that's why it comes up "re: Copago".
When you see spam just click the 'notify' buttoon at the bottom of the post and the moderators will deal with it.

I'm probably late in sounding in on this discussion, but I wanted to give my 2 cents worth. I've been using a laptop for over ten years, and now, with the new smart phones, I find that I do a lot of surfing the net using my phone. A couple of weeks ago, I got a hairbrained idea that I wanted a tablet, too, so I spent many hours with salesclerks at the store researching and trying out the different tablets and the iPad. I bought the Samsung and tried it out for a solid week before deciding that I'm much better off just using the laptop and my phone. It seemed that every app that I downloaded, I needed to be on the internet to use and even though it was wifi capable, I don't have access to wifi everywhere I go. I could use my phone much faster and typing on a laptop is definitely much easier. I took it back and got my money refunded.