Not getting an iPad? Don't forget the 'netbook option'

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the other cheap alternative: used iBooks. I have both a netbook and an iBook G4 12.1". Guess which one gets used more? The iBook. It runs OS X 10.5 right out of the box, legally, no hacking involved. It feels about as fast compared to the netbook, and all the hardware is solid, reliable, and recognized by OS X.

You can get a used one for like $300 nowadays, or cheaper.

Sure, it weighs 5 (yes, FIVE) pounds, and is essentially no longer supported by Apple. But it has good battery life, a nice keyboard and a usable trackpad.

Plus it has a couple of nice extras: a FireWire port that supports "target mode" (very handy for techies), and it still runs a lot of older MacOS software without resorting to (the amazing but sometimes tricky) SheepShaver.

If you want a small notebook instead of an iPad, what's so wrong about a MBA? After all it's extremely lightweight, super-slim (around the size of a Joojoo) and more powerful than any netbook. I never understood the hype about netbooks and I totally agree with Steve Jobs on that matter.

netbooks aren't better for anything ^^

I don't think any of you who are running OSX on a netbook are selling me on the idea very well. Nearly everyone says it's great (or ok) apart from xxxxx where xxxxx seems to be something rathe important!

And as someone already pointed out if all you are going to do is a little surfing/email/lightroom - why bother loading OSX on it in the first place. Why not just run windows 7?

I've used my MSi Wind U100 everyday for the past 2 years and enjoy it. I know all the disadvantages of netbooks, but there are some advantages that people don't want to mention. I've used it as a movie player in the car for my 2 year old (non HD rips) and use it for work everyday. I'm an IT tech and have to use multiple OS's so I have OSX, XP, Win7, and Ubuntu on the Wind to troubleshoot and VPN into clients.

I'm interested in the iPad, but with the iPhone OS tied to it, I'm not able to do as much on the troubleshooting side as I need. I'm hoping that we'll see a full (or iPad) version of OSX on it sooner than later.

Oh, and the Wind works perfectly with OSX, using 10.6.2, as it's my main OS. It's a great tool to have instead of bringing the heavier MBP (my main computer) every place I go.

Personally, I don't know why you'd want to make your own OS X netbook - ok, the netbook itself is cheap, but once you factor in the cost of your time in hacking it in the first place and then maintaining it (fighting the inevitable battle with Apple over updates etc), and the fact that your OS X experience is actually quite horribly impaired by slow, unsuitable hardware etc, it actually seems quite a high cost for very little return.

Here's a crazy idea - if you absolutely have to have a netbook for those must-have-a-tiny-underpowered-laptop moments, why not just leave it running Windows 7 like it was designed for? No it's not a Mac, but here's the important point - it never will be.

I took the plunge and set up a dell mini 10v with snow leopard last fall. since my desktop is a sawtooth g4, I can't really complain about speed - in fact with 2gb of memory it works well. The real drawback- and it is a quality issue - is the track pad on the mini 10v. The end result - I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but a hobbyist.

Of course I still miss my 12" g4 powerbook.

This user is on topic. This post is about "if you're not getting an iPad, then what about this?", and someone talks about not wanting an iPad.

Just because someone's a Mac user doesn't make them fall over themselves for everything Apple releases.

I'm already running OSX on my trusty Eee PC 1000h and it's good enough for now. I don't mind that I may not be getting the full/real OSX experience, and I certainly don't think it's a better product than a Mac/iPad; the thing that does it for me is that it was a fun project, lots of tweaking and hours put into this.

I'd gladly get an iPad if I had the means, sadly these days my wallet is a bit compressed and there's little room for new shiny gadgetery.

"On the other hand, getting something smaller than my MacBook Pro that does everything that I need it to do, and for a lower or similar cost, sounds pretty sweet too."

...right up until the point that you discover that that the netbook's a cheap 'n' nasty laptop that runs your applications much slower than your MacBook Pro. I like "cheaper" as much as the next person but you have to appreciate that these devices are cheap for a reason and, as the old adage goes, "you get what you pay for". I certainly will buy an iPad (or similar concept) over a netbook simply because the software has been written for the hardware and I should expect to get great performance. Under no circumstances do I want to be looking at the spinning beachball of death any more than I do so today. In this respect I absolutely consider netbooks to be an evolutionary step backwards.