Not Recommended yet to replace your Laptop with iPad

The iPads keypad is unsuited for heavy laptop users, especially those that have to write extensively.

Because it has a touchscreen keyboard, writing becomes unwieldy; unless of course you type so slowly that they put you on the extreme left lane on the highway. But then most of us who use laptops type at a decent speed. Apple allows for a Bluetooth keyboard but the whole idea of carrying along an iPad is that you don't have to carry anything else, isn't it?

The Apple iPad has a memory limit of 1 GB. This means that if your iPad has thousands of software apps downloaded and if the iPad becomes slow, there is no way you can increase the memory. You will have to delete apps you don't need often. This is boring.

I mean, you downloaded apps because you need them. No fun deleting them to get more. The Apple iPad has a maximum data storage capacity of 64 GB in the Wi- Fi+ 3G version. While 64 GB in itself does not sound too light, try adding all your music, movie and photograph files into this one iPad. Chances are you would be crying for additional capacity in less than a week of using it. Not just that, you will have e- Books by the dozen and of course all the apps to go along.

Steve Jobs hates Flash. This means that all those files and websites based on Flash viewer will be out and out useless. Before you go, “ So what?”, a large percentage of online video material — including YouTube — is Flash- based.

Watching videos online is out of the question unless you take the trouble of downloading it and converting them into an Apple- friendly format. That is just not cool. Apple iPad runs on Wi- Fi or 3G or both. There is no 3G in India yet, so let us forget that for a while. You'd have to use the Wi- Fi option, which gives you limited scope to connect.

Once again, not an easy situation to be in. Its ok for the Americans or the Europeans who have Wi- Fi hotspots every 200 metres or so. Here, some coffee shops that have them, charge you for the service. But you could go ahead and buy it if you wanted a device that would give you entertainment, let you read e- books, newspapers and magazines online, and take advantage of the 1.5 lakh apps that you could download from the Apple Apps store. It could, therefore, replace your netbook.

But don't junk that laptop yet.