Explain iPads to my Mom...

Mom uses an iPad for the first time.

Two weekends ago I went to visit my mother in Connecticut. I rarely go overnight anywhere without taking a laptop and or a tablet with me and that trip was not an exception to the rule. One evening I took out my iPad to charge it. My mother saw it and immediately asked about it. She's thinking about buying, in her words, "a little laptop for me because John (my step father) hogs the computer sometimes." She wants it mostly for checking her email, looking at pictures of her grandchildren, making photo collages of her grandchildren (she might be Snapfish's number one customer), and Skyping with her grandchildren.

Before she buys anything my mother does a ton of research and she was curious to see "what the big deal is about iPads." So I handed her my iPad and let her do whatever she wanted to do with it. She even got into my Facebook account on it which, as George Costanza would say, meant worlds were colliding!

After thirty or so minutes of using the iPad my mom gave it back to me and said, "this could get addicting." But she still had questions like, "is this any better than a laptop?" And most importantly for this context, "why are schools buying these instead of laptops?" (My mother works with elementary school special education students). I gave her my thoughts, but what would you say to my mother about iPads?