Classroom Conundrum: Take One Tablet, One Laptop, or Both
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It may be that you'll want both a laptop and a tablet. Tablets are perfect for catching up on your notes while commuting to class by carpool, train, or bus; for taking notes unobtrusively; for reading; for tapping out email missives; and for Web surfing in a café or public area. A tablet can also act as a second, independent screen that you can use to call up Web references while writing on your laptop.
But versatile as it is, a tablet has limitations. Notably, it doesn't handle multitasking among multiple open windows well, nor does it offer convenient control over full-bore office apps like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Last year, Brooklyn's Long Island University was one of many that doled out Apple iPad tablets to incoming freshmen and transfer students. The maneuver was popular among students, but it didn't free them to leave their laptops at home; instead they used the tablet as a tool to complement their laptop as they walked around campus.
Use Scenarios
To figure out what will work best for you, you'll have to look in the mirror and assess your needs. To help you get started, we've invented five use scenarios and suggested how a tablet would likely fare against a laptop in each one.
Taking Notes in Class
The winner here depends on how you type. If you're a touch typist, be aware that the on-screen keyboards of tablets are noticeably harder to type on at the same speed and with the same accuracy that you're used to achieving with a physical keyboard. The absence of tactile feedback makes them harder to type on by feel--for example, when you're looking up at the board and not watching where your fingers are falling.
Hunt-and-peck typists, on the other hand, may prefer a tablet. Its chief advantage is its long battery life, which means that you may not need a charger to get through your day.
Writing Papers
The laptop wins here, hands down. You enjoy the benefits of a large screen, plenty of ports to back up to media and to the cloud, and a solid keyboard to type on. You also have easy drag-and-drop functionality between open windows, plus more-powerful note taking, annotation, and word processing tools than tablets offer.
For writing a dissertation, you'll need office tools more robust than those available on either Apple's iOS or Google's Android platform; and you'll want a screen with a diagonal size larger than 10 inches to review your work on. You'll also want the full control and better ergonomics that a laptop keyboard and a mouse offer.
Reading Books
If you plan to buy ebooks for your next English Lit class, you'll find that reading them on a tablet is infinitely easier and more comfortable than reading them on a laptop. No contest.
The only reason to consider a laptop for reading ebooks is if the ebook you need is part of a textbook service offered for PCs but not for tablets.
Roaming Around Campus
Tablets have the edge on laptops for reading, Web surfing, and even light writing activities. A tablet's light weight, lengthy battery life, and ability to power up quickly contribute here. In recent years, many institutions have added laptop-friendly desks to libraries, lobbies, and student lounges; but any bench, bar stool, building stoop, or stadium bleacher seat is friendly enough for tablet use.
Photos and Videos
If you're a film, art, or photography major, or if for other reasons you'll be editing long videos or large image files, you'll need a laptop. Tablets, even with the help of external or cloud-based storage, don't possess the software tools or the graphics muscle to do such work efficiently. Tablets are terrific for playback, however, and make fine platforms for showcasing your handiwork.
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