iPad?

<p>Is it a good idea to get an iPad for college? Please explain why or why not.</p>

<p>You will hear lots of people say no, but if you already own a desktop, I find it to be way easier than a laptop.</p>

<p>I personally ONLY use an iPad, a wireless keyboard and a Wacom Bamboo stylus. Note taking apps like Notability and Evernote make in-class note taking a breeze (with audio), most of my books are digital rentals that I can annotate on my iPad, BlackBoard is really easy to use with my iPad, and the battery lasts me all day, etc.</p>

<p>You can use cloud storage apps like Google Drive (which USC gives you 10GB for free) and SkyDrive. I also have a $40 battery pack that reads USB sticks and SD cards that the iPad can interface with and charge from.</p>

<p>There are a variety of word processing tools like Quickoffice (which is free) and Pages. But you can use Splashtop or Logmein (I have used both) to remotely log into your PC when you need to access a desktop. A lot of people will see me fooling around on my Mac Mini through the iPad and think I’m running some kind of hacked iPad. It works great for me and affords me a lot of flexibility.</p>

<p>The platform has matured a lot. I have found it a viable alternative to a laptop. There are only a few instances when I wish I had one; almost all are when I can’t get to a WiFi connection and access my desktop remotely.</p>