Because the average buyer is ill-informed IMHO. I know more and more people who are having buyers remorse...
Perfect example of how the iPad would have SUCKED BALLS if I had one on our vacation to Hawaii last month-- INSTEAD of my Asus eeePC.
1.) On the 7 hour airplane ride, my wife and I upgraded to first class. On my eeePC I had some movies/shows ripped to a 32gb SDHC card. Using a headphone splitter, and because of the traditional clam-shell design we were able to both watch 5 hours of video. (iPad FAIL: the tray tables / extra room / seat configuration in first class would have made it impossible to do what we did if we had an iPad because of its form factor "pad" design without creative propping or cases)
2.) One of the Sail/Dive companies we were interested, an many of the restaurants we wanted to check out from the hotel via the internet were, you guessed, heavily reliant on Flash. (iPad FAIL: If we had the iPad, we could not have browsed the site of the Sail/Dive company or some of the restaurants menus in advance.
3.) Shot tons of photos. Camera uses SDHC. For piece of mind I like to do a nightly dump of the photos from the camera/card to the netbook as backup. (iPad FAIL: no card slot, no way to get my photos onto it from my SD card(s).)
4.) Tethering. I am able to tether my eeePC to my Verizon phone for 3g/EVDO access if no wi-fi. ONE DATA PLAN. Current iPad is/was wi-fi only, and needs another data plan.
The "Netbook" TRULY gave me everything I needed for a week on vacation. FULL internet, (Wife had to edit a Word/Excel document while there), Ability to backup, preview, EDIT then email, photos taken. If we had an iPad we still would have needed/wanted a regular Netbook/Notebook.
The BEST option would probably have been a MacBook Air, but until the Asus Netbook dies, it ROCKED!
I "switched" to Apple circa OS-X Jaguar. I kinda "switched back" in recent months to Windows 7 and Android, and I kinda like it. (By kinda, I still use Mac, Lin, Win do to my occupation, and my Mac Mini continues to be my HTPC hooked to the big screen.)