Last week’s column generated more questions so today I will hit a few of those.
First, “Why did you say Dell is the best computer maker? I think (fill-in-the-blank) is much better.” Well, I understand your comment; however, that is not exactly what I said. I believe when you reread the column you will see that I said, “At this point in time I always suggest Dell.” I stand by that statement, but they have not always been at the top of my list. In the past they have been close to the bottom. My recommendation takes into account quality, price and service. Many manufacturers have fallen down on customer service. In my opinion, while Dell is not the best in customer service, they are not the worst.
Many of you appreciated me bringing the AIO computers to the forefront. Some of you “googled” about them and found that they are quite an interesting concept. Also, they are currently more expensive than most of us would like to experiment with. So, thanks!
Now the one where I guess I drew most of the “attacks”…iPad! I did not include iPads in my comments about computer types, i.e. netbook, notebook, desktop and even AIOs. The reason being that although it is technically a computer it does not have all of the abilities and features of a standard computer.
The iPad is a computer whose main calling in life is to allow the user to view prepared things online. It is not used much for creation. For instance, you can view any website, e-book, picture, movie, etc. you wish. However, it is hard to contribute to those same things from the iPad. Yes, I could have written this column on an iPad but from what I hear and have experienced it isn’t the most comfortable keyboard to use for longer typing. Emails yes, documents no. I could also purchase a keyboard that would connect to the iPad and make typing easier. If that’s the case why wouldn’t I have just bought a netbook at half the price or less?
They are neat and I think that over time they will affect the e-book readers like Kindle and 
Nook more than the notebook/netbook markets. They are perfect for reading books (once they come out with a version that has an antiglare screen) and magazines with much better quality than the e-readers and the page size is a great deal nicer. Even an Apple lover told me that they are basically an overgrown iTouch.
I would love to own one but not at such a high price for a feature-poor computer. One of the major drawbacks is the iPad’s small storage space. The highest end iPad has 64 GB of storage, which is probably OK if you do not want to add many programs and save files. I personally am not for putting all of my files on the cloud as of yet.
I like the concept of the iPad but it needs some increases in functionality before it can fairly be compared to a computer.
