Best netbook or tablet for travelling

I got a little (12.1") Lenovo i5 thinkpad X201 notebook with 128 Gb SSD on ebay for $250 including post. It's light and 9 cell battery gets 6 hours and is relatively indestructible. Immeasurably more useful with a proper size keyboard and much more powerful than any atom powered netbook.
Ultrabooks look light but ridiculously expensive and I haven't tried a Surface apart from tinkering in a showroom - seemed nice but very small screen.
I have an ipad toy which I love but when it comes to serious work, it is useless. Those people who say they dont need a pc and can do all their work on an ipad obviously do nothing more than use the browser, play itunes and games and send a few 2 line emails. Try editing a 200 x 500 line spreadsheet on one and you will see what I mean. Better still, type 10 x A4 pages on it without an external keyboard. To sum up: ipad + external keyboard = crap laptop.

OK there are a few things to be aware of here.

Yes you can easily get the camera connector kit for the ipad. It comes with a USB port for connecting cameras directly and a SD card reader. There are also many third party options available as well. The only issue is storing photos on the ipad is not a great idea, but its perfectly opk for putting photos on social medai sites etc. Just keep a copy of the photos seperate.

secondly the Surface RT tablet does come with office. But its a version written for the RT tablet. Its not the same as standard excel and as such many of the more advanced features like macros. I expect any decent excel course would cover the use of macros and probably dig deep enough into excel that the RT version may be an issue.

So I agree with 1, get a light small laptop/netbook/ultrabook, instead of a surface RT tablet.

OK there are a few things to be aware of here.

Yes you can easily get the camera connector kit for the ipad. It comes with a USB port for connecting cameras directly and a SD card reader. There are also many third party options available as well. The only issue is storing photos on the ipad is not a great idea, but its perfectly opk for putting photos on social medai sites etc. Just keep a copy of the photos seperate.

secondly the Surface RT tablet does come with office. But its a version written for the RT tablet. Its not the same as standard excel and as such many of the more advanced features like macros. I expect any decent excel course would cover the use of macros and probably dig deep enough into excel that the RT version may be an issue.

So I agree with 1, get a light small laptop/netbook/ultrabook, instead of a surface RT tablet.

Also an ipad is a pretty expensive form of SSD storage compared with just buying a hard drive (cant connect to ipad) or simply buy more SD cards.

We have just returned from a 3+ months trip Scotland to Turkey and back by road. For us the Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 was perfect for wifi, photos, gps and so much more. From what we saw, when comparing it to people's i-pads, it did everything the i-pad did, but was over €100 cheaper. Bigger screen too.

#5, the difference between tablets is usually a personal choice, but tablets in general are not perfect for all travellers.

Absolutely correct. What's good for one traveller, is no fun for another. I just found and still find the Galaxy Tablet provided/es everything I needed/need for my journeys.

Thanks everybody extremely helpful from you all. The iPad is coming with us either way for ease, and it looks like a budget netbook is the way for our needs, including storage of media files etc.
Thanks once again everybody

Anyone try the new ASUS keyboard touchpad with external keyboard and Windows 8, etc.? I'm going on a 3 month trip where I'll want to blog, email, deal with photos, listen to music and read/listen to books. I don't need Excel or anything fancy. Just a way to access the internet and deal with photos. Any thoughts?