:’) One can try to juice up an old laptop by adding new guts, but to get Mac-level duration out of one battery charge won’t work, simply because Apple has maxed the size of its batteries in part by removing plugs, doors, etc — hence the lack of ability of users to replace the batts themselves.
I tried out a Toshiba netbook or two lately, seems to be very good build quality, pretty much as I would have expected (I remember those excellent — for their time — Toshiba laptops of years ago). I like the size and totability of netbooks, but the keyboards are too small. Having dinked with a few iPads now, I think the same can be said for those as well, but A) I have big hands and B) younger people who have been using mobiles for a while (Palm, Blackberry, iPhone, etc) are going to gobble them up, particularly when the 3G model arrives.
You make good points and I wasn’t trying to diss the Toshiba. Each manufacturer makes choices based on what they think will sell.
I feel for you on the big hands thing. I’ve got a friend that has huge hands and even on a full sized keyboard, he’ll sometimes hit three keys at a time.