Leave your laptop at the office. You’ll be in good company.

A new survey conducted by The Business Journals shows small- and midsize-business owners are more connected than ever to technology, significantly boosting the time spent on the Internet, their use of social networks, and their adoption of new tech tools.

The biggest change that took place in 2010 was the introduction of Apple’s iPad and the real birth of tablet computing. In less than a year, 9 percent of business owners said they were using iPads. At the same time, the number of business owners using laptops, desktops, and netbooks dropped.

“Laptops are becoming an antique,” said Godfrey Phillips, vice president for research for The Business Journals, which, like Portfolio.com, is owned by American City Business Journals. That may be a bit of hyperbole, but it’s not entirely out of line with the survey results, or what entrepreneurs say about their technology use.

The survey of 2,223 bosses at companies with less than 500 employees, most of them with between five and 499 workers, was taken from November 2010 to January. In it, small- and midsize-business owners said the drop in sales they’d experienced following the recession had stabilized, but they were expressed lingering concerns about the nation’s long-term economic health.

Beyond discussion of the economy and how their companies were doing, The Business Journals asked detailed questions about the business owners’ tech habits. Beyond the finding that 9 percent of business owners were using iPads, the results revealed other rapidly shifting tech tastes:

• 79 percent of small- and midsize-business owners used a desktop computer, down from 83 percent in 2010.
• 16 percent used a netbook or notebook, down from 21 percent.
• 60 percent used a laptop, down from 65 percent.
• 37 percent used a smartphone or PDA, up from 27 percent.
• 31 percent were using mobile applications, a category that wasn’t even measured the previous year, on smartphones, cell phones, or tablet computers.

The survey results from The Business Journals validate a conclusion by the technology research firm Gartner, which in March lowered its expectations for growth in the personal computer market for 2011 and 2012. Gartner said interest was shifting to tablets and smartphones and away from desktops and laptops.

The most extreme example of the shift is, of course, the iPad, which didn’t hit the market until April 2010 and had already sold 15 million units by the time Apple rolled out the iPad2 in March.

“They launched a category, and that’s been amazing for them,” said Phillips of Apple’s tablet computer. “In all our years, we’ve never seen increases like that, and it’s amazing.”

For Doug Daniel, CEO of East Coast Entertainment, a Charlotte, North Carolina, event and music production company, the iPad he bought when they first went on sale has become his default computer when he leaves the office.

“I have a MacBook Pro, but more and more I’m weaning myself from the laptop and leaving it here in the office,” he told Portfolio.com.