This guy has a good video of the two side my side.

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=V_7w2JfojMA

I have used both now, and I have to say, the iPad is a much better device. 

Netbooks are like $299, right?

Some less, some more. If you want one with 3G and a contract, by the end of your two year contract you will have paid $720 more just on data charges for the netbook.

But for hardware, netbooks run from $250-$800. Most are around $300.

I think that in a year or so, I could see this ending netbooks. For what a netbook can do, this thing blows it away. If you need real computing (like development work, or photoshop), you need a laptop. A netbook is not going to cut it anyway.

For 90% of the people who a netbook will work for, an iPad will do what they want far better. 

That's why I got A laptop. And I think you are confusing them with tablet PC which is more a like the Ipad.

I wouldnt advise any one to get first Gen Apple products anyway, it's always better to wait and get the followup which are always such a better deal and just better period.

For me, the iPad is less about fighting netbooks and more about lowering barriers to computing. The iPhone OS model is extremely reliable both in terms of being resistant to malware and user incompetence. The touchscreen interface is even more comfortable, intuitive and elegant than the venerable mouse.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who still don't use computers, or hate them as they use them. They get confused by something as fundamental as a file system, which the iPhone OS hides away from sight. They just want the computer to get the hell out of the way so that they can do what they want to do with it, and this is something that the iPhone OS strives to achieve.

It's far from certain, but the iPad might actually do for computing what the DS and the Wii did for gaming.

I wouldn't even advise anyone to get an iPad at all right now.  Someone had one at work today and it was cool but it was still a pretty big pile of fail.

Don't get me wrong, it's a really cool device but it has a lot of problems and while it does a lot, it doesn't really do anything nearly as good as anything else comparable.

Unless you're just looking for a superfluous gadget there's really no reason to get an iPad at the moment.

Also, just like I don't know why you'd want 3G on your iPad, I don't know why you'd want 3G on your netbook.  Even if you did, the experience on the netbook is just so much better because you actually have a competent browser that can actually do things and you can even get 4G if you want.

As a bonus, you can even do that hyper-advanced thing called multitasking on a netbook.

iPad's are cool, but they're much further from a year from ending netbooks.  This isn't even your typical don't buy first gen Apple products thing, it's just not a good device that's incredibly overpriced.

Well, I agree the next iPad will be a better deal, but if you bought the very first iPhone, it's still a very capable product here 3 years later. 

I would guess in 6 months to a year, the iPad will drop in price, but you won't see anything ground breaking in there design for a few years. They might add a camera, but I think the reasons it's not in there have less to do with cost, and more to do with it just not working well in a tablet device.

And if a Tablet PC was more like an iPad, they would have done well. The problem is a Tablet PC is just like a laptop or netbook, without the keyboard. That's not a good thing.

Bringing a touch interface from the phone world to the table world was the way to go. This is why I think the only thing that will rival the iPad in it's market space, will be android devices. But that again, will help kill the Netbook.

For what I want, the iPad is a much better device then a Netbook. If a Netbook did all the things I wanted to do, I would get a netbook. Here is a list for why I chose an iPad over a netbook (I don't have mine yet as I ordered the 3G)

• Work blocks everything on there network. If I want to use MS Messanger, I can't from work. I can with the iPad with 3G.
• I have to think a lot at what I do. This requires me to write small amounts of stuff down quickly. From stored, to on, to writing, to stored again on the iPad is MUCH faster then on a Netbook.
• The iPad does things "best in class", where the Netbook is a cheep laptop. For example, if I want to watch Netflix on my iPad, There is not a portable device at any price that does it better.
• I have paid for dozens of apps I use everyday on my iPhone, that I can use on this. I can not use those apps on a Netbook
• If I lose it, I can wipe it remotely, and when I buy a replacement, I can restore it to the old one in a mouse click.
• It charges over USB, so when I travel with my wife, I can just charge it off her laptop with a simple cable.
• The screen is second to none. No netbook comes close, and no laptop in it's price range does either.

Really the only thing I would like it to be able to do that it does not, is allow me to have my IM client open and do other things. If I have IM open and I am chatting, I am stuck just chatting. But, OS 4.0 will be revealed in 3 days. We will see what it has in it :) 

EDIT: Why the 3G? I can stream things over it. I can remote back to my desktop PC from anywhere. I can use DropBox, and always have my files with me. I can take a photo with my iPhone, upload it to DropBox, and Download it to my iPad. I will be connecting it to my work Exchange email system, so I will get (and can send) emails from anywhere. There are a lot of reasons.

Lol, "netbook is really a limited platform." Is this guy retarded? You can ONLY use Apple approved apps on the iPad! You can use any windows software you want on a netbook.

Lets see what else. Look how ugly the iPad looks with all those finger prints and smudges.

Another thing I noticed. He's using a lot of background programs, including the absolute system hog and retarded Norton Anti-Virus on the netbook. That will significantly decrease overall performance to make it look slower than it is.

What else. We don't know if he visited those pages before or not on the iPad so they could have been cached.

And his argument against the Netbook keyboard? "They are just bad." Hmmmm how scientific. The only complaint with the Netbook keyboards early on was size, but now they are nearly full size keys and you will definitely be able to type much faster and easier on a Netbook than on a touch screen iPad. So he basically just gives "note taking" to the iPad without any reason at all. Clearly it will be much easier and faster with a Netbook.

Lets also not forget that the iPad is running a mobileOS which will obviously boot faster than a full operating system. And he was using XP instead of Windows 7.... come on.

Worst comparison by a rookie/apple fanboy ever.

@nightsurge

So you have used both and see the netbook as being better?