Quote:
Originally Posted by
Alter 
Really? No flash? That is a downside.
I already have a standard macbook at home and another as my work computer. I am looking for something that I can use on my daily commute and when on biz trips of 2-3 days also for a quick forum/email/facebook check at night. The ipad looks perfect for the daily commuting and the macbook air looks better for the biz trips, both look fine for the night-time use and I agree that my kids will love playing with it....leaning towards the ipad because of that.
About the softbank plan...I looked into it but decided that it would be better to get the wifi ipad and a portable wifi unit from emobile or wimax that offers unlimited usage for around 3000 or 4000 yen/month. Check it out. The softbank deal is around 5000/month but it is not unlimited so expect to be paying more than that if you use it a fair amount.
You have a good point about the pocket wifis, forgot about those entirely. I will just get one of those.
For the forumming/email/facebook, the iPad is not bad.. in fact I really like using the friendly facebook app on iPad, pictures are big and bright, there's only the new feed column and the extraneous side columns are taken away, etc. Better than Facebook for iPhone. Forumming is ok, but typing replies sucks unless you get that keyboard. Email works but I don't like Apple's mail programs on anything, so it's even there. Plus you get a reader out of it, which is better to do on an iPad than on a laptop you open and close, when you're on a train or something. If those are the 3 main things you do, the iPad is no lesser than an MBA in those areas. I don't consider a MBA a full function computer either, since it doesn't have an optical drive built-in, and I still use DVDs.