Question by Cooking for Amateurs: iPad as a replacement for a laptop in college?
I’m a senior in high school right now, and I’m starting to think about college applications, and that’s gotten me thinking about laptops. With the iPad at about the price of the average laptop, would it be a good replacement for one in college? I do have a quality desktop computer, and from the research I’ve done, the main problem with going only with an iPad is its inability to do word processing and writing long papers. However, with a desktop computer to do the serious writing and studying, would an iPad be good to take to class, take notes, etc. instead of a laptop?
Best answer:
Answer by Vomit
Don’t even THINK about it. The iPad is far, FAR more limited than a laptop. It’s not just word processing. It’s everything. Get a laptop.
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I agree with Vomit. An iPad is a novelty item and I would not recommend it over any serious computer use, especially for school or work. Get a netbook or a laptop.
wow this pisses me off how they market the ipad as a tablet PC but let me first tell you that it is nothing more than a 9 inch screen ipod touch,
you CAN’T type word power point or excel projects the only thing you can do with it is music apps videos and MP3’s and alsp you do not have the same kind of power as a laptop and also can’t do a many of the other things that college will require you to do like use flash based websites because more and more colleges are using websites to do the teaching for them.
Your best bet is to get a net book for a full fledge laptop with a cd drive and the sorts
best bet is to get a windows based pc
If you’re going to run specialty software like AutoCAD, compilers for programming, Photoshop, Matlab, video editors and so on, a laptop is definitely better. Ipads are closed off gadgets. You can only download apps from Apple’s store (without jailbreaking) and there isn’t an app for everything. Some specialty software also requires more processing power than the iPad offers. Then there’s the problem of not having a built-in USB port for your flash drives and other accessories – you have to pay extra for an adapter.
Depending on your field of study, you might need a portable computer for more than writing notes and papers.
Although I love my iPad and use it in place of a laptop, I would never want to do that for college. I am in highschiol and just type papers and go on the Internet with it. I have the Bluetooth key board and the app pages and it works great for writing papers. I guess you could get away with it if you are just taking notes, and then for anything major, use the desktop. So yeah I guess it would work well. Plus it is light, so it is easy to carry around. No it is not a full laptop, but it does almost as much as a laptop does.