Wooo, iPad 2 launch I hear (from the US at least). When the original iPad was released, I became rather (in)famous for bashing the hell out of it. I thought it was overpriced, heavy, and lacked a lot of features that make it a viable alternative to something like a netbook. Now that the second one has been launched, the original iPad now makes perfect sense to me. 

The trouble with the state of the iPad at the original launch, for me, stemmed from two things: 1) Lack of multitasking was a disaster, and 2) It was priced out of the netbook alternative range. Recently, multitasking has been brought to the iPad with various releases of iOS 4.x, and even more recently prices of the original iPad have dropped. Prices of the iPad 2 have not changed (starting at around £430 for the basic, non-3G version), but Apple has dropped prices of the original iPad (which is still on sale) by about £100. Essentially, this means that the original, 16GB wifi-only iPad’s price has dropped right into my netbook budget. 

I’d been looking at various Dell and Sony netbooks to use as a sort of ‘side bitch’ to my main setup, and all of these start at around £350. So you can see what my dilemma is; a netbook for £350 that runs full Windows 7 (albeit, the Starter edition), or for £20 less an iPad that runs iOS 4.3? Before any of the fanboys play the ‘it has better graphics and two cameras’ card, I won’t be using my iPad/netbook for any serious gaming or for video chatting/photography. While I’m on the subject, I think having a camera on the back of a tablet is stupid; but that’s a different blog post. The iPad’s email application looks outstanding, and for casual on-the-go web browsing and multimedia, it’s perfect. I only plan to use my netbook/iPad for writing documents (Pages for iPad supports .docx, a huge win in my books), emailing, web browsing, and video/music playing. 

The main attraction of the original iPad though is its new price. A 16GB wifi-only model is perfect for my needs (I won’t need 3G as my phone has hotspot functionality); it’s also about £30 cheaper than the netbook I’m looking at. I’ll need some time to decide, and I’m going to wait for a friend of mine to pick up an iPad 2 before making any final decision. 

Sidebar: If y’all think think these are the justifications of a fanboy, I wrote this post on a computer running Windows 7 and I have an HTC Android phone sitting on my desk.