Blurts

A recent Tech and Learning piece contrasted K-12 implementations of iPads and netbooks and concluded that the netbook was the clear winner. I reference it here because I am sensitive to the issue of individuals feeding their own biases with the content they view and promote. Personally, I find the conclusion astounding (with the exception of the cost issue and cost can be deceptive).

I understand the problems of arguing from individual anecdotes, but I have a fairly high-end Lenova netbook running Windows 7 which in fact costs more than my wifi only iPad. I very seldom use the netbook and annoyingly must recharge it and then run through all of the updates each time I think it might be interesting to give it another try. This tends to be a 10 minute process or so just to get it going. I understand this annoyance has something to with my lack of commitment to using a product I find annoying to use. An annoying experience compounded I guess by annoyance.

The truth – I really can’t write effectively on either, but I can write if necessary. The comment regarding the netbook may confuse some. Yes, it has a keyboard. However, the size of the physical keyboard is actually a little smaller than the length of the iPad. This forces a “pecking” style of text entry whether the device has a “real” keyboard or not. Of course, I am an adult – don’t hold that against me. The reality is that I have full size computers and am not forced to rely on either the netbook or the iPad. Once you take into account this reality (a real computer when I need one and a second device), the personal choice for me is easy. What I want to do on a small, mobile device is a far more pleasant, time efficient, and cost-effective experience on the iPad. When the article extends the cost analysis to include software I disagree on about any level I can think of unless the author assumes that the only use of the device is to access free online services. Really, have you purchased a copy of MicroSoft office or an Adobe Suite. There are simply little available in software available from big companies that is not a solve everyone’s problems with one costly package solution. The cost of apps, to me, seems to provide a financial advantage and not a disadvantage, for the iPad. After purchasing lots of software over the years, what you get for a dollar or four dollars seems astounding. BTW – my writing solution is not Pages, but Elements in combination with DropBox.

I am going to purchase a wifi-only Xoom because I do want to support a competing operating system. I have purchased two netbooks now and I have pretty much ended my experimentation with devices of that type.