Our au pair just bought a new Toshiba netbook, so we got to see it running side-by-side one of the various iPads around the house. Let’s just say that the netbook, which our au pair bought as a gift for her mother, isn’t going to get switched on again any time soon (in fact I suspect she may return it to Amazon and get her mom an iPad).
In summary: it’s slow, has a crappy display, and is hard to use. I’m guessing that switching it to Mandarin wasn’t doing it any favors either — our au pair is from China and is running her iPad in Mandarin too. (Apparently, it took 2h just to get going when it was first switched on — not exactly sure what was going on there — initializing the Windows install? Certainly not a great “out of box” experience.)
Incidentally, typing on the netbook’s keyboard was remarkably annoying. The middle row is offset in such a way that I pretty much constantly mistyped any letter on it, making it virtually unusable. I can touch-type on the iPad’s glass keyboard in either portrait or landscape by contrast. (Although it would be great if the iPad offered a one-thumb mini-keyboard as an option.)