They're generally adequate for web browsing, word processing, etc. If that's all you need it for, they're fine.

It's not so much that they are so bad, it's that regular ultraportable notebooks have really come down in price.

Can't beat that!

Yeah, at that point I didn't bother going across the street to see what the big box vendor had. I knew they couldn't deliver for a week, and the TV wouldn't fit in my car.

Yeah, I've seen those and have been intrigued. But when I really need to do stuff like that, I can do it on the laptop. I forgot to say that I also have a work laptop that I use every day. I just don't pull out the home laptop as often.

java, last month I got an 11" MBA and I don't whip out that external keyboard as much as I used to either. But I do use it quite a lot when I am grading papers on the ipad.

One thing I've been happy with is my netbook with XP. XP does great in 1 Gig of Ram with a slow processor. But I grabbed it when I saw it. Even broke a personal rule and bought it at Best Buy because I had not seen an XP netbook in months let alone for $174. But I would at least look for that.,

Computer repair folks. Does anyone know of a cable check that will test:

• Firewire 4 pin
  
• Firewire 6 pin
  
• Firewire 9 pin
  
• USB A
  
• USB B
  
• USB A mini
  
• USB B mini
  

The Paladin 1577 [link] is the closest, but it doesn't do FW800 9pin, and we really need that one. The mini USB I could do without, but not the 9pin FW.

Interestingly, Fry's sells stuff cheaper online than in its stores, but last time I asked them about it, they were very "So? What?" about it. Today when I went in for the iTouch, knowing it was $5 cheaper at Best Buy than online at Fry's, but not having considered Fry's meatspace prices, they hand me a flier saying they'll match anyone's online price.

Score. Took a bit of waiting around, but apparently it lopped $35 of the price.

I'm thinking the one with both wireless and phone network access is the way to go, but I'm not sure whether to go for the full 64GB or not. Thoughts? 64 would allow me to transfer pretty much my full iTunes over if I can figure out how to do that so I guess it makes sense.

I have the 64 3G and I need to be very very careful about not trying to put too much onto it. But I have music, some tv, movies (compressed to yuckiness, but I have them), a lot of books and then bunch of random other stuff.

And I just traveled for two and a half weeks with just the iPad. My phone isn't even really smart. I did get the Gembox keyboard case. I don't use it all of the time but when I am editing or doing a bunch of typing, it was a sanity saver. Not just because you could type on it but because it had directional arrows so you could move around in things you'd typed as well.

I had the iPad for nearly six months before I even got it a data plan because a lot of the time, wifi is just fine. BUT! When I was traveling, I used the 3G a bunch. Because you are moving around and there's not always accessible wifi.

It honestly worked. I mean, I was happy to get home and have a full-size keyboard with a shift key on each side, I won't lie. But it wasn't hard to not have a laptop with me except for the couple of times I'd like to have printed boarding passes. That said, if it had just been me traveling, I can do those right on the iPad. I just needed two in this case. So one printing job was done a hotel's "business center" printer.

Here's a powerful, lightweight laptop that's not a Mac: Slim, Fast ThinkPad Proves Big Things Come in Small Packages

Too pricey (eta: $1300) for Vortex, though.

Ultralights aren’t for everyone, but with the ThinkPad X220, Lenovo sure is doing its best to make the case that they can be.

This latest version of its super-slim executive standby is ThinkPad doing everything it does best. Still impossibly portable — at 3.3 pounds despite the bumped-up 12.1-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel display — Lenovo packs in everything a traveling professional (or just about anyone else) is likely to need.

The centerpiece is a new Core i5 Sandy Bridge processor, which upends the middling performance we usually expect from an ultralight. Benchmarks trounce just about everything we’ve tested of late — save for a few recent-vintage high-end machines — and they completely blow historical ultralight benchmarks out of the water, beating most machines with the last-generation chip by 30 to 40 percent.

Okay, so now I have an iTouch. I have a few questions which are probably pretty basic.

Can I synch to my Google contacts? I've set up the Gmail account, and the calendar is synched, but I don't see where I can get contacts.

Also, it says iPod in the top left corner. Can I make it not do that? I don't want it to do that. I know it's an iPod.

It's primarily for media consumption, but I downloaded Words With Friends, just because. Any other apps (that aren't Angry Birds or Plants and Zombies, just because, you know) that are nifty? I'm still leaning on my Android phone as my main pocket computing, but if I have the space and the price is right, why not?

ita, there's one called iBattery that I love because it tells me exactly how much battery I have left, instead of just trying to guess what the teeny battery icon in the top right corner is showing me. IIRC, it's a free app.

Honestly, the one I currently use far too much is Bejeweled ($2.99). Also the 99-cent skee-ball.