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Now a HUGE pad of engineering paper... that's definitely necessary.
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<p>Engineering paper? What's that? Heh sounds interesting... where do you get it?</p>
<p>A tablet seems the most practical. It's portable and you can write notes on it, if it has decent writing software. Character Recognition would not be that important. the only thing you lose out on is computing power.</p>
<p>Engineering paper is the greatest thing ever! The stuff I've always bought is kinda yellowish in color. It's got a grid on the back, like graph paper, and no lines on the front - but the lines from the back show through. (The lines are closer together than notebook paper.) I love it for all my math classes and drawing any kinds of diagrams, and pretty much everything else too. </p>
<p>I've always bought it from the ChemE department at my school, but they sell it in the university bookstore too... and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere, I've just never looked.</p>
<p>How about best of both world. Get a laptop and an externail monitor with a keyboard and mouse. Instant desktop and instant laptop. There are only a few programs you will ever use that are not laptop friendly. Such as Solidworks, Catia, UG. The classes though will always have computers and labs.</p>
<p>Well, I ordered a new tablet pc, it is a Fujitsu ST5022 and can be had for about 2100$. It'll be about 2 weeks before it comes in, but i'll do a review on it after i've used it a bit. </p>
<p>-A</p>