The Apple iPad was one of the most eagerly anticipated product launches in recent years, and it didn't disappoint. Hundreds of pages were written extolling the virtues of this sleek new gadget, and inevitably, it went to the top of people's wish lists. But the iPad does have some drawbacks, and you should be clear what these are before you go ahead and buy one.
First let's look at the good aspects of the iPad: It allows you to surf the web. The built-in Apple iWord 2010 software allows you to read and create spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. It has a built-in ebook reader, allowing you to read books bought from Apple's iBooks store, as well as any ebooks that are in the ePub format. You can use your iPad to play games, watch movies and videos. Apps specially written for the iPad allow you to read your favourite newspapers on it too – and the apps often render the newsites in a much more user-friendly way than the traditional news websites.
Apple have conceived the iPad to be an all-purpose tablet computer, which can do everything a PC or game player can do but is easily portable.
Now the drawbacks: The iPad did not use the revolutionary iInk technology which has anti-glare properties and allows you to read for hours withour tiring. By contrast, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Digital Reader, both have it. The iPad is backlit, which means you can read in bed, but whether you will want to for any length of time remains to be seen. If you are mainly after an ebook reader, then you might be better off sticking with the Kindle or the Sony ereader, both of which are considerably cheaper than the iPad.
The iPad has many attractions for business people on the go, especially as it comes with office software and is much smaller than a laptop – but a big downside is that it has no built-in USB port. This makes it hard to transfer documents to and from your PC, though one way to work around this is to upload your documents into Google docs (which supports all document formats), and which means you can reassess these from your office PC using the cloud. Apple have also made available docks with USB ports, but you have to pay extra for these. If you can put this all on expenses, then go ahead and buy the iPad – it will certainly save you from the hassle of lugging a heavy laptop with you.
The iPad also allows you to play games, but hardened gamers might wish to stick to the PSP or perhaps buy Sony's latest portable games platform, the Sony Dash, which allows you to browse the internet, listen to music and watch videos as well as play games. The Sony Dash is cheaper than the iPad as it doesn't have the ebook reader nor the office software. But if you are a gamer who also wants a device that allows you to do your homework and surf the net as well, then you might want to consider the iPad.
Finally the iPad does not support Adobe Flash, which might depreciate many people's browsing experience as so many websites use flash these days. One upside of not supporting Flash though, is that the iPad is much faster than all the iPad killers that have emerged. If speed is more important to you than having adverts visible when you browse the net, then go ahead and order the iPad.
The Asus 1005HAB Eee PC is one of the best netbooks that are on the market today, in fact, it is one of the best sellers in its' class.
The battery life can be between 3-4 hours, depending on usage of the system, a longer-lasting battery can be bought for around $80 from various sites to add more life to the Asus 1005HAB Eee PC to up to 6-8 hours total.
The screen is bright and crystal clear from any angle you wish to view it from and even far away, even at the other end of a room. It comes with an Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 224 megs of shared video graphics, that will give you a lot to do with graphically-speaking.
For such a small computer, it is amazingly powerful, from word processing, to databases even graphic-intensive applications such as Adobe Acrobat and such others as well. It can do just about it all.
The unit also comes with a 1.3MP web-cam that is built right in to the computer so that you can stay in touch with family, friends and co-workers. The picture quality is so amazing and crystal-clear.
The Asus 1005HAB Eee PC comes with Intel® Atom™ processor N270 and 1G DDR RAM which can be expanded to 2G as well as a 160G hard disk drive to be able store lots of software so that you can stay productive both at home and away from home.
Also included in the netbook is a 3-in-1 SD card reader so that you can upload all of your pictures from your digital camera onto your computer and share them with with whomever you wish to.
Built-in high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g/n) allows you to connect to the Net in one of the most efficient ways possible. Another wonderful aspect about this system is that it comes with (3) 2.0 USB ports, so that you can hookup a plethora to the Asus 1005HAB Eee PC system, everything from printers to MP3 players and so much more.
And, the most impressive aspect of this netbook? The weight of it, no more lugging around a heavy laptop, this beauty weighs just a mere 2.4lbs and is one-quarter inch thick, so say goodbye to the bulky laptop.
This system comes with Windows XP Home Edition and other software included are: Adobe Acrobat Reader, Windows Live Suite and Microsoft Works along with many other useful applications.
The Asus 1005HAB Eee PC is one of the best in its' class and can outshine many of the others.
