[tomjen3]

I have tried every variation of new laptops/phones/etc I have come to the conclusion that anything which doesn't have a full physical keyboard is a consumption device. That is not necessarily a bad thing (you can consume excellent learning material, for example) but it will preclude it from ever being useful for work.

You can certainly attach a bluetooth keyboard to an iPad (I did so yesterday) and then they are pretty good for writting emails, but they are annoying to carry and a thin laptop is much better.