Notebook, Netbook or Tablet?

Over the last year and a half I have owned and tested several portable computing devices.  It started with a Samsung N150 Netbook dual booting Chromium and Ubuntu.  Google gave me a CR-48 Notebook, I did a review of the two devices running similar Chrome based operating systems, then I sold the Netbook.  I immediately missed it.  Though smaller, its performance was on par with the CR-48.  Rarely am I concerned about screen size, but I do have strong opinions about keyboard size.  Compact keyboards have always been my preference. The CR-48 keys and celestial bodies share similar spacing.  I have had several Notebooks over the years and have never noticed the key spacing before.  Initially, the Netbook was more functional.  That's until I rooted the CR-48 and installed a custom bios. It's currently running in paperweight mode.  My new toy is a Motorola XYBOARD through Verizon and on their 4G LTE network.

The only reason I bought the Netbook was to blog.  My HTC EVO wasn't ideal for this application.  To help the XYBOARD with this task, I decided to buy a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.  The jury is still out on these items, I'll share more on them later.

The XYBOARD is rooted, of course.  It was nice to un-install the bloatware that comes pre-loaded.  Not much else.  This is not a review on the tablet itself.

With the fancy bluetooth keyboard and mouse I bought I can prop up the tablet using its carrying case and work in a very similar environment to that of a PC.  The devices are not as responsive as I would like when connected to the tablet or to my PC via a USB Bluetooth receiver.  Actually, the keyboard isn't bad, but the mouse lacks a certain sharpness when pointing.  I don't know how else to explain it.

On its own, without the Bluetooth accessories, the tablet is very responsive while running a remote session and the click, right click and scroll functionality is very sharp once you get used to pointing and touching.  To be honest, a mouse has more features and requires less motion when transitioning from one desktop to another or from one side of the screen to another, but it just doesn't fit the interface.  There is a reason tablets are built with touch screens.

It would be easy to name Netbook the winner as I find them very functional with more than enough computing power to have reasonable business computing expectations.  I would never buy a computing device I couldn't use at work and all of my equipment has been thoroughly tested running office apps, application development and database test environments.  The tablet hasn't been put through all of the paces and some of my working environments are not currently compatible with mobile operating systems. Some of these environments I will be building on the tablet, for the tablet.  If we allow Netbooks and Notebooks to be considered interchangeable based on user portability preferences, then for the time being, let's call it a draw.