Apple introduced the iPad back on January 27th as the missing link between the smart phone, or the iPhone as they want to presented, and you laptop or desktop computer, the market need something in between, their answer the iPad. My full  review can be found here.

The price for the iPad is a little to expensive, cheaper than projected, starts at $499 for a simple 16 GB of storage. Yet I do believe that Apple is right, there is room for a device between the full computer and the smartphone, Steve Jobs made it clear that is not the Netbooks. I believe those devices have been really popular and I am sure Mr. Jobs sees them as a threat to his beloved iPad.

This weekend my wife, she is more technical that she thinks, surprised me with one of this Netbooks the Asus  Eee PC 1005, with 250 GB hard disk, 1 GB of RAM, 10 inch screen, just like the iPad and with Window 7 Starter already installed.

My first impression was the weight then I took it out of the box, very light 2 pounds only, perfect to carry on your backpack. Battery life is one of the best features in this device, between 9 to 11 hours, depending on what are you doing with it. I fully charged the device and while I’m typing this I haven’t use even 3% of the battery. Also is good to note the power supply is pretty small, many laptops or netbooks come with this huge power supplies that make carrying the device, not that good if the power supply is heavier than the computer.

The mouse pad has a zoom in, zoom out feature using 2 fingers in some applications; Adobe Reader and Microsoft Word, I tried with Adobe Reader and works just like the iPhone. The computer comes with a webcamera and microphone build on the top of the screen. If I look for a feature that disappoints me a little, I have to say the keyboard. Even being a full keyboard, is pretty small, when you are used to something bigger, I think I’ll get used to soon, also the noise and how it feels when you are typing is very cheap plastic feeling. I should not expect the Commodore 64 keyboard in one of this computers.

Something to note, this device comes with a manufacture application to provide you with online storage, I won’t be disabling that at all. Looks like you can share that storage with other computers, I wonder if I can set it up as my backup destination.

In a few words, this is the device to do the normal things of every days tasks. Still going to install Visual Studio 2010 on it.

Related read about the iPad

http://alpascual.com/blog/where-will-ipad-fit-in-2010/

Cheers

Al