I was tossing between an iPad and netbook for a long time. While iOS is (arguably) a more refined and slick operating system that Windows, there are a few pretty big features that made me choose a netbook over an iPad. 

The Aspire that I have has a dual-core Atom processor, clocked in at 1.66GHz, which gives the netbook some pretty decent performance. When casually browsing the web or tapping away a document or email, the netbook functions perfectly. However, multitasking is where the netbook really shows its true colours; the 1GB of RAM means that once you have three or more programs running, you’ll notice things slowing down significantly. For example, when I have my browser open and a couple of other programs such as Paint or iTunes, video and music playback gets a little jerky. Despite this, I’ve managed to put this netbook under some pretty punishing demands and it slows down, but has never completely crashed or frozen. 

One of the main things that drew me toward this netbook in particular was its design; it’s super sleek, and when closed is actually pretty thing, meaning it can fit in and out of my bag with ease. It’s also very light. My Aspire also packs a 6-cell battery, which gives me a quoted 8 hours of battery life. In ‘real world tests’, I’ve found that moderate to heavy use will give me an entire day on the battery (with a low screen brightness, might I add). 

So, why did I choose this over an iPad? Firstly, I need a physical keyboard (the keyboard on this netbook is oustanding). I also need a proper computer OS; iOS isn’t a proper OS in my honest opinion. Price was another huge deciding factor; this was over £150 cheaper than an iPad and does a lot more for me. I still don’t believe the iPad is a truly productive device, despite the fact that it will keep my emails flowing, etc, etc. Be sure to stay tuned to the website for a full review, hopefully coming up in the next two weeks.