One of the iPad's better-liked features so far is its speed.
It flies, and feels much faster than the gadget competition, which includes Amazon's Kindle e-reader and netbook PCs.
This has been affirmed by preliminary data from Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware (CPWR).
According to Gomez, 74% of the most visited sites on the web load faster on the iPad than they do on netbooks.
Across the entire web, the iPad appears to be slightly slower than netbooks. Gomez CTO Imad Mouline speculates that the better performance on top sites could be a results of efforts by sites to optimize for the device. If that's right, the iPad could provide a better browsing experience across the board as more sites follow suit.
Of course, some of these performance gains are likely a result of the iPad not loading Flash content. This speeds things up, but may also limit functionality on many sites. However, Imad says that even correcting for this, top optimized sites appear to load equivalent content faster on the iPad than on netbooks.
As Steve Jobs said when he unveiled the device, for the iPad to be a success, it needs to provide clear advantages over smartphones on one side and laptops on the other. Smartphones are obviously far more portable than tablets or netbooks, but are generally slower.
Jobs has touted the iPad as the greatest browsing device to date. (He has also slammed netbooks, saying they aren't better at "anything.") The iPad is already more portable than a netbook; if it proves faster at loading web pages, it could deliver on that promise.
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