Having supported thousands of netbooks across 50+ schools I can say they are an awful teaching tool. They require constant maintenance and updates and installi

Having supported thousands of netbooks across 50+ schools I can say they are an awful teaching tool. They require constant maintenance and updates and installing software is a nightmare. Remember these are being bought by schools where there probably isn't even a full time I.T Technician on site and there is rarely the infrastructure in place to automate any of the work. Getting young children to simply log into a netbook can sometimes take most of a lesson. After swapping out netbooks that have keys torn off, ones that haven't been charged and ones that don't have the software installed - the kids are frustrated and the lesson is over. Fleets of iPads are much easier to manage. It takes 5 minutes for a teacher to push out an app via an MDM platform to all iPads. The latest educational apps out there are being built for iOS first. Best of all they are relatively virus free. Also kids recognise them as being an expensive piece of equipment and treat them with more care and are more enthused to use them. iPads let you get straight into the content and the technology just gets out of your way.