Yep. 5 netbooks would cost $1500, less than half the cost of the iPads. The Roi is just over 1 year as apposed to 3 years with the Apple solution. Don’t get me wrong - i’m writing this on my new iPad, but for the money, the ipad is a luxury device. - not the most practical choice for government. Plus, a netbook won’t require a second computer to sync to.
As soon as you’ve put a hard disk into any device, you’ve created an IT situation that will make the ‘savings’ look pretty pathetic in three years.
The strength of these pad computers is the lack of disk, external media, external devices, etc. They’re going to have a much lower ongoing cost to maintain.