Back to School Shopping List: iPad or Laptop?
· By Katie Sellers · Laptop Rentals
Updated August 11, 2011
As we push into August and the summer is moving toward a close, it can only mean one thing…it’s time for back to school shopping. Now for some that might be good news, but for most I would guess that this news is not entirely welcome. If you are heading off to college this fall, it means that you need to start thinking about what you might need to pack and what you might need to buy for the coming year. It can be a stressful time of the year if you have to make the decision about what kind of laptop to take with you to school, and the array tablets available is only making that decision harder.
Tablets might seem incredibly convenient for students to take to college. They’re small and compact compared to laptops and netbooks, and they also weigh much less, so they are much easier to take to class with you. Apple’s iPad is the top-selling tablet right now and will most likely be a product that is considered by college-bound students; however, according to dealnews media editor Jeff Somogyi, there are ten reasons why you should not buy your college student an iPad, especially in place of a laptop.
“It is a great product [and] I have the utmost respect for Apple,” Somogyi tells The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task in an interview. “But in this instance I think that the cost per benefit is a little too high especially when it comes to students.”
The most basic version of the tablet starts at $499. It features 16GB of storage and WiFi connectivity. If you want 3G connectivity, you will be looking at an iPad that starts at $829, and you will have to pay an extra monthly fee if you choose to buy the wireless Internet plan.
“You can get a very nice laptop for that price,” Somogyi says. “You can get a laptop that does everything that your student needs it to do for less than the low-end iPad.”
Not only will a laptop be cheaper than an iPad, but it will also allow your student to write those ten-page research papers much more conveniently than on an iPad.
Although your student may push for an iPad, here are the reasons why you definitely should not cave in.
#1 It’s Expensive
#2 It’s Not the Best Solution for Note-Taking or Editing Documents
#3 It’s Too Distracting
#4 It’s Ultra-Portable and Ultra-Droppable
#5 What Makes it Desirable to your Kid is What Makes it Desirable to
Criminals
#6 It’s Meant for the Enjoyment of One Person, Which Means Social Seclusion
#7 Digital Text Books are a Marvel, but There’s No Secondary Market
#8 It’s a Status Symbol, Plain and Simple
#9 It’ll Already be Old Technology by the Time You Buy It
#10 They’ll Want a Laptop, Too
Source: Yahoo! Finance – 10 Reasons Not to Buy an iPad for Students
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