Mobile internet - netbook and payg, netbook on contract, ipad or something else?

[butterpieify]

Me and DH both work doing various things, including mystery shopping and sales, that involve lots of time on public transport/killing time in cafes. We also do a lot of work on computers. We could really do with some way of using the internet on the move - we have very basic blackberrys on contract, but they just aren't cutting it, and nipping into libraries and internet cafes isn't brill either. One device between the two of us would be fine, but I'm bewildered by the choice.

Ipad would be £99 down, then £20 pcm for 15MB data
Netbook would be £10 down, then £25 pcm for 1MB data

(those are with 3)
Or should we buy a netbook and a payg dongle thingy? Not too keen on apple as apparently they are a nightmare to get to use with anything else, but it is cheaper per month, and does seem to do more...

I should add that money is tight, but we can save up around £100 without too much hassle over a couple of months, a bit more (possibly up to £300 ish at a push) if needed.

Why are Apple a nightmare to use with anything else? What exactly? I have a house full of Apple products including an iPad and never had a problem. I paid full price for my iPad and am on a £10 per month tariff so if you can get one cheaper I'd snap it up. For what you want to do it sounds ideal and it means you don't have to faff around with dongles which are a pain in the arse

Meant to add, confused about your data allowances, presumably you mean 1GB not 1MB.

I've heard (although this is only rumour - happy to be corrected!) that the ipad doesn't have USB, won't play flash or copied files, censors books on the kindle and music if they don't think it is ok and is generally not very compatable with word etc.

I think I did mean GB too I also meant 15GB for both plans.

I have an iPad that I use heavily on 3G. I am very satisfied with the speed and coverage. Obviously the speed is not the same as my home fibre optic service but very useable.

I pay £10 per month and that is plenty. I do lots of YouTube downloads in a month.

I don't know about censorship other than there are certain technical standards to be met before something can go through the iTunes store. There are certainly plenty of morally dodgy materials available. Kindle materials can easily be accessed via the kindle app.

The iPad and iphone do not support flash for technical reasons, but you can download apps which alleviate this a little, such as the skyfire browser. You can watch BBC shows via the iPlayer app and wifi.

Flash will be supported eventually.

I'd heard that it's not so much stuff that most liberal people would ind morally dodgy, just stuff like gay dating apps and the karma sutra, but they do allow "how to cure yourself of homosexuality" type stuff. Tbh, I doubt I would be wanting to use the stuff they censor anyway, it's just a bit worrying.

So, for your £10 a month, what do you get? Didi you have to pay totally upfront for the ipad itself?

"flash for technical reasons, but you can download apps which alleviate this a little, such as the skyfire browser. ... Flash will be supported eventually."

Apple (Steve Jobs) has apparently blamed bugs in Flash for making the Apple kit crash now and then. Banning Flash is an easy way to try to ensure Apple kit runs well, but is something of a "screw the users" (and websites) attitude, IMO. The car dealership around the corner from me uses a Flash presentation to display their cars. No doubt they will eventually have to pay for more development work to either make an App or change their website to work with an iOS device.

Many thousands of businesses will either have aspects of their sites 'unusable' or 'invisible' to iOS users for some time to come, unless rumours about a relaxation last August/September come to fruition. (If it was only for App developers then it makes no odds to thousands of websites with Flash on them.)

I believe Steve Jobs has stated something to the effect that iOS will never run Flash so I am not sure that it will be supported 'eventually' and use the fact as a reason for my clients not to depend on Flash as they could be cutting out a wealthy section of their visitors from seeing their site to best effect. On the other hand, one could argue it the other way - an Apple iOS user has paid for an "up market" product and then had artificial blocks on what they can view, imposed on them.

Where popular websites have used Flash for providing user content (rather than adverts), Apple seems to have allowed Apps to be made to allow access. Apple can micromanage and disable any Apps they want (*), primarily to stop some rogue application from affecting millions of iOS devices, but it is rather "Big Brotherish" in my view.

If I pay some hundreds of pounds for a computer, I don't expect Microsoft, in 6 months time, to change something on their servers and an application I have (which may have cost me money) suddenly disappears.

(*) Not exclusive to Apple. It seems Google with Android can do something similar.

iPad is fully compatible with Word. I have the Microsoft Quick Office app on my iPad, save the documents on Dropbox app and can access all documents (and photos etc) from either PC or iPad. This does away with the need for USB. I was concerned about this when I first got the iPad, but in day to day use, I cannot say that I have ever needed it.

The Quick Office app is excellent. I use it when another family member is using the PC so that I can continue to work, and it is very easy to use.

It seems to me that there are ever fewer websites using Flash technology. It is occasionally an issue, but less and less.

There was a big hooha recently about the gay conversion app, and I know that Apple (through their iTunes store) can refuse permission for certain apps but that really does not concern me. This was the only time that I heard anything controversial - perhaps it happens more often and I just don't realise it - but the consumers are generally good at picking up and protesting about it.

If you go for the iPad, and I would definitely do that rather than a netbook, then get a case with keyboard like this as it would make typing much easier. I am definitely going to get one of these.