Originally Posted By: skyactiv
Tablets Suck.
I bought an iPad and hate using the touchscreen. My wife plays with it, I no longer touch it.
I think you'd be more happy with a good laptop that has a high screen resolution. High resolution cost a boat load, even for Windows. Cheap, sucky to use laptops have 1366X768 resolution.
Get a 13" MacBook Air if you can afford it. You'll use it and wont blow money on other cheap junk for a long time saving you in the long run.
Despite my strong feelings against tablets being used for any kind of real work, they do have their place... Mainly for embedded apps and most basic use. That said, I like my ipad, but it is SO much faster to type on my MBA, because the keyboard is a more reasonable size (yes, I do have a BT external keyboard). Same deal for those netbooks. I just wrote a 130 page technical document - not fun on a netbook, fine on a laptop.
And I totally agree that the screen is where the $ is, and causes all these apples to oranges comparisons to pop up.
Im running an MBA from at least two years ago, and doing the bulk of my PHD research, analysis, etc (very computationally heavy) on an MBP from 2008 which runs perfect. I personally dont get caught up in the lifecycle changes with mac nearly as much as I do windows, so I think youre on to something - OP may want to shop used MBAs, one with an SSD and good battery.
If completely caught up in toys (tablet), I agree that waiting until the next iteration comes out is smart. If I were to do it again, Id go ipad mini vs fullsize, personally.