The Gadgets Page

I bought a netbook a little over a year ago. I thought it would be perfect for conferences because it was so small, but the battery life was so unbearable short that I was always searching for an electrical plug. At the last conference, I ended up going back to my trusty Macbook because at least the battery would last six hours. I endured the bulkiness in exchange for the convenience of not having to find electricity in every room.

With the iPad, however, there is a perfect marriage of long battery life and portability. It’s smaller than my netbook and the battery lasts easily ten hours. I haven’t fully acclimated to the onscreen keyboard and I prefer to have a real keyboard. The Apple Bluetooth keyboard works perfectly and even when I have to carry both around, they are still about the size of my netbook.

When we bought the iPad, I looked forward to reading books, playing video games and watching movies with it. I had no idea how good it was going to be for taking notes and actually working!