Out of Pod Experience

Well peoples, its nearing September at a respectable pace, and that means going back to university... yay

Not strictly necessary, but given my usage of a desktop PC for my computing needs (gaming, internet surfing,TV and work), I am currently looking into getting a tablet for auxiliary usage. Budget is a few hundred quid, and even the Apple hater in me is sniffing around the iPad range due to its large installed user base supporting a diverse existing ecosystem. Primary usage would be browsing the net for research, probably getting a keyboard for it for word processing on certain tasks, storing textbooks on and in general providing a bit of internet access on campus and in cafes (I like doing work in these, such a nice atmosphere for work ).

The iPad : £400 - after discount £340
At present, the benchmark by which everything is measured. Highest resolution display on the market with a good battery life. A preexisting ecosystem, but I have never owned anything Apple so have no real knowlege of iOS, or Android that matter. Having been an early adopter of the Windows Mobile 7 platform (Samsung Omnia 7) I can safely say that a dead ecosystem is pretty much useless. Microsoft bought Skype last Autumn, I got it a few weeks back when they made a version for their own mobile interface. Being that current standard of a tablet, if someone's going to make a tablet based program, its going be on this first.
Also, its an iPad, theres a kudos factor for that kind of thing, and a 15% discount which knocks the price down a bit.

The Androids : varies
The other one, again a large, varied ecosystem but with greater capacity customise. I would greatly appreciate peoples oppinions on these devices, especialy the Sony Tablet S and the Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
I am intrigued by the design of the Sony one, but I noticed the lower resolution, which could be annoying when reading text or ebooks on the devices.

The Surface : unknown
And the new one, that caught my attentions onto tablets and sparked curiosity into the state of the technology at the moment as it becomes a mature platform, the Microsoft Surface. Made out of magnesium and running an intel x86 architecture CPU as opposed to the Nvidia and ARM cores of the others it should have the entire windows back catalogue working on it as I understand it. The price is expected to be around £500 from looking around for a 32GB version of this platform. Should be able to install such useful things as LinPro Microsoft Office straight out of the box.

Okay, those are my current thoughts on this, and I wanted to bounce it off of an intelligent and informed community before buying anything.
Thankyou for your time for getting to the end of this wall of text too

people buy tablets and then just buy a keyboard, I just don't get it.... it baffles me. oooh look at all these NEW SHINY thingies! just use them exactly like the old dull thingys that aren't any fun anymore. maybe I'm just jelly I don't get to travel around all that much so I can't justify buying a shiny new thingy

Well I don't have a laptop, I have a desktop so for me I'm a little separated from people who already have a mobile computer. Going for a laptop, while feasable would be replicating what I have on a desktop, I don't need to put MathCad or AutoCad onto it.

A tablet on the other hand is a more recent consideration, having upgraded from a Nokia 1112 to a Smartphone I can say I am sold on a touch interface for consumption of information. I don't get to travel much beyond 8km cycle to university, but having a slab to lie back on bed with is appealing too...

The reason people buy keyboards for them is that for maybe an hour or so a fortnight its useful. The rest of the time you can simply use the touch screen.

Damn your title! was expecting serious adult content