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I was offered an iPad at work a few months ago.  I turned it down.  I was offered one again last week.  I accepted it this time, but I powered it off and put it in my desk drawer.  I have no use for it.  I think tablets will go the way of the netbook.

I have written numerous posts about netbooks over the years.  I actually write many of my posts on my netbook.  I was an early adopter of netbooks, purchasing a black Asus Eee 701 the day it came out.  This little 7″ netbook was the first one on the market.  Technically the white Eee was the first, but either way, the Eee 701 was the first netbook model to be widely sold.

All my life, I had been a desktop user.  Laptops were a poor value, underpowered and overpriced.  Plus I never needed a computer while I was on the go.  I went to college at a time when everyone took notes with pen and paper.  Laptops were not carried around by every student like they are now.  Anyway, this little Asus was around $400 and was super portable.  Finally, a cheap little laptop.  I bought it.  I spent money adding RAM and an SD card for storage.  I bought a copy of Windows XP on eBay to replace the Eee’s Linux OS and make it usable.  Lots of folks bought up these cheap little laptops.

I quickly realized the Eee wasn’t particularly usable.  The dinky keyboard was barely big enough for touch typing.  The 630MHz was overwhelmed at times.  The biggest problem was the screen’s resolution, like 800×480.  I didn’t mind the 7″ screen, it just didn’t pack enough pixels for me to be able to see much of a program or a webpage.  Some dialog boxes had their OK buttons shown off the screen, meaning there was no way for me to use the program.

A year later I moved up to the Samsung NC10 shown above.  It cost about the same as the Eee, but was so much more useful.  It packed a 1.6GHz processor, a 160GB hard drive (versus 4GB SSD on the Eee), a bigger keyboard, and a higher resolution (1024×600) 10.1″ screen.  Now this was a real computer.  It was able to do everything my primary desktop could do, except read optical discs.  I was able to work on documents for a textbook.  I ran ArcGIS on it during some meetings I had for work.

Netbook manufacturers quickly realized the little Eee wasn’t big enough or powerful enough, so they started making bigger more powerful 10″ netbooks.  Just about everyone produced the same netbook – Atom 1.6GHz CPU, 160GB hard drive, 512MB or 1GB of RAM, 10.1″ screen.  The only differences were the styling and build quality.  My Samsung NC10 is the best netbook ever made, in my opinion.  Reviews gave it high marks, and there was even a Facebook group for those who felt their NC10 was better than all other netbooks.

My NC10 has served me faithfully for three years now.  I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM for about $20 a few months after I bought it.  I couldn’t resist such a cheap upgrade.  The thing still looks brand-new.  A testament to Samsung’s build quality.  Everything works and looks and feels great.  Why do I want to move up to a more capable laptop?  Sort of the same reasons I upgraded from the Asus Eee.  I want something that is faster and has a higher-resolution screen.  Once again, software and websites are starting to outpace my netbook.  I think it’ll be fine for the next year or two.

But let’s get back to what I really wanted to discuss tonight.  A lot of people got burned on their netbook purchases.  They bought these cheap $400 laptops instead of the $1000 desktops and laptops they used to buy.  They expected better build quality and performance than a $400 laptop could deliver.  Some people outgrew or broke their netbooks quickly.  Fanboys ripped on netbooks for being slow.  I thought they were pretty zippy at the time.

The problem was that people were trying to make netbooks do stuff they weren’t designed to do.  They weren’t intended to be a person’s only computer.  They were for web surfing, word processing, and other light tasks you would do while at a cafe or a meeting.  They weren’t for games or editing photos.  Luddites buy new computers and expect them to be leaps and bounds better than their old computer.  Well, those people bought netbooks because they were cheap but didn’t check the specs.  They just assumed they would be higher-spec than their old computer, when in reality netbooks were only on-par with a four-year-old computer.  My NC10 performed as well as my then four-year-old Pentium 4 desktop.

Everyone who wanted a netbook has bought one by now.  Some were pleased, more were disappointed.  I know people who had netbooks and eventually quit using them.  Sales went down.  People eventually figured out they would be better-served buying a real computer, like a 14″ or 15″ laptop.  More power, but still portable, and prices have come down to $600 for a decent laptop.  Sadly, new netbooks don’t perform much better than the NC10 I bought in 2008.  I don’t see many netbooks taking advantage of the dual-core Atom processors that came out.

People ran into the limits of netbooks, because they didn’t realize what they were for, and stopped buying them.  Some stopped using the ones they bought.  Others, like myself, understand their limitations and keep using them.

It looks like Samsung, of all companies, is giving up on netbooks.

So let’s talk iPad.  I have an iPod touch 4 and love it.   It works well for reading e-mails, light web surfing, and using social networking apps.  Take it out of your pocket, mess with it for a few minutes, then put it away.  It’s not for content creation.

People I know with iPads went through several cases trying to find one that provides the proper screen angle for setting it on a desk.  Then some people found typing on an iPad to be difficult, so they bought the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.  That reduced the portability.  One high-profile iPad user is Diane Sawyer on ABC World News.  She has her iPad placed prominently on her desk.  One day I noticed that she had resorted to using the Bluetooth keyboard, like one of my colleagues at work.  I wonder how many other people have had to shell out for a keyboard so they could type decently on the iPad.  But are you supposed to be doing any typing on the iPad?  The device has an on-screen keyboard, but I think the iPad was intended more for tapping out a short two-line e-mail, typing in a Google search, tweeting, or updating your status on Facebook.

Harry McCracken, a tech journalist, recently lamented the lack of a good word processing app for the iPad.  But is an iPad really the right tool for the job?  I certainly wouldn’t want to work on a document on an iPad.   Rumors have come out about Microsoft Office becoming available for the iPad.  But again, I ask, should the iPad be running a word processor?  I’ve also heard people complain about the difficulties of blogging from an iPad.  I cannot imagine putting this post together on an iPad with the WordPress app.  This would have taken hours to type.  I tried tapping out a Google+ status update on my iPod touch, and that took way longer than it should have.  I cannot type on a flat piece of glass.  The keyboard on the iPad is of a decent size, but as I found out while trying that Asus Ultrabook, I definitely need a good keyboard with good tactile feedback.

What is happening is people found they didn’t need their desktops of full-size laptops to check e-mail and monitor their social networking accounts.  They increasingly relied on their iPads.  It’s easy to carry around the living room or use in the bedroom.  People have gotten used to using just one computing device – their iPad.  But now they’re starting to run into its limitations.  You can’t easily access saved data on an iPad and you can’t really transfer documents to and from it.  You can’t really create content on it.  Now people are trying to force the iPad to do things it wasn’t designed to do.  The iPad is a consumption device.  It is not for content creation.  Also, it is for someone who only does one thing at a time.  You can switch between apps and use multiple browser tabs on an iPad, but it isn’t as seamless as on a computer.

When I was given the iPad, I was told that I’d like it eventually.  I don’t think I will.  I am a tab junkie.  My browser always has at least two tabs open, and I toggle between them often.  Twitter in one tab, other stuff in another tab.  If I’m reading news, I’ll have a news site’s main page in one tab, and I’ll have the individual articles I want to read open in other tabs.  I may have 15 tabs open at once.  When I surf, I’ll see stuff that looks interesting and I’ll kick it out to another tab for reading later.  It’s a cinch to websurf on a computer, just center-click a link and it opens in a new tab.  I use a Firefox add-on where I can highlight text, then right-click it to do a variety of searches based on that text.  Makes it easy to quickly look up something in Wikipedia, Google News, Google, or Amazon.  You can’t websurf like this in Safari on an iPad.  I also comment on a lot of blogs, news articles, and photos on Flickr.  All that typing would be a nightmare on an iPad.  I am a power user, and I am a content creator.  An iPad just isn’t going to cut it for me when it comes to how I do my computing.  I don’t read a lot of books, and I don’t watch many YouTube videos.  I imagine an iPad is good for those activities, but I don’t engage in those activities.

I think more people are going to realize their iPad isn’t “all that,” and will go back to their laptops.  I think iPads are expensive toys.  Few people have figured out how to use them effectively, and even fewer businesses have figured out how to use them as more than expensive executive toys.  The value isn’t there.  You’re paying $500 for 3/4 of a computer when you can buy 100% of a computer for the same amount of money.  There are some pretty darned good computers that only weigh a couple of pounds and cost the same as an iPad.  I know what my netbook is good for and I use it accordingly.  That’s why I haven’t pitched my netbook yet.  I think people are trying to do too much with their iPads, and will eventually figure out they aren’t a particularly good purchase.