Some Netbook questions...

[Dragon Angel]

So... I was recently considering on purchasing a netbook, as there will be more than a few events within my near future where having a small laptop would be a GREAT convenience, but carrying my main laptop (a 15" Lenovo T60) would prove to be rather..impractical, for various reasons I don't want to elaborate on at this moment. Now, I have used a netbook in the past, so I am aware of their shortcomings (a small keyboard, low desktop resolution, slow processor speed, not good for games...and the rest of these), but that netbook suffered a death before its time... (R.I.P. my little Eee 900 - you served your mistress well. )

Thus, I now segway into my list of questions:

1. Is the nVidia Ion nearly as good as it has been marketed? Or...is it just more worthwhile for me to buy a netbook with an Intel GMA instead? The real plus which I have heard with regard to the Ion is its ability to play HD video very smoothly, with none of the common problems such as audio/video desynchronization or huge CPU lag. However, as I don't foresee myself playing very much, if any video in HD on my netbook, this is just a convenience - are there any other advantages to paying extra for an Ion?

2. I also thought of purchasing, instead of a normal netbook, a netbook tablet such as the Lenovo S10-3T and the ASUS Eee T91. I have never, ever owned a tablet PC in my life, so I am willing to try something new...however, that willingness seems to come with a steep price of almost doubling the cost of the netbook. Where a normal netbook without tablet functionality would probably cost about $350 - $400, a tablet netbook could reach up to approximately $600 - $700 (depending on the manufacturer)!

Now, my question here isn't really so much "is it worth it for me to buy this extra feature", but more of "have any of you had any good experiences with tablet netbooks, or tablet PCs in general"? Is a tablet PC's pen OK for drawing? (I don't expect WACOM-level quality, but simple sketches ought to do just fine...) Lastly, are tablet PCs much more prone to lag in comparison to their normal counterparts?

3. Have netbooks equipped with solid-state drives improved over the last few years? My Eee, although it was pretty convenient to use, suffered from massive disk lag due to the fact that ASUS gave me a very...low-quality drive. I was forced to format it as FAT32 instead of using NTFS, because all of the extra features of NTFS (journaling, last-accessed time, etc.) were causing the SSD to lag tremendously. I couldn't begin to tell you the waiting times I suffered whenever programs tried to write large amounts of data to the disk.

Thank you all in advance for your responses... Any and all suggestions from you are welcome, as well as netbook recommendations (I'm closely eyeing ASUS and/or Lenovo at the moment right now, though).

[General Zod]

I don't see the point in owning a tablet. If you can't think of a reason to get it I'd suggest going with the normal variety. Incidentally, SSDs have improved over the last few years but they will add to the cost. Especially for anything over 16gb. (Though most netbooks come with 120 or 160gb standard drives as norm).

[Beowulf]

Tablet PCs vary wildly in capability as far as drawing goes. On the top end, you've actually got Wacom tech in the display. At the bottom, you've got a resistive display that requires a bit of pressure to get anywhere. You'll probably find it tough going to draw with a capacitive display, unless they've got good palm rejection tech. This is a review of the S10-3t.

For now, I'd skip the cheaper tablets. If you're going to spend the cash on a tablet, spend it on one that has a active digitizer (Wacom), and not one of the cheaper capacitive or resistive only tablets (this is all assuming you want to draw/ink. For just consumption, eh, whatever). If you're not going to put in the cash, then there's some really nice low-end laptops. I've heard good things about the Dell Vostro V13, for example.