Tablet for school?

[crosswalk]

I am going to be a High School senior this next school year and college after that. I will most likely be majoring in engineering or computer science. I have an hip pavilion laptop from 2010 that I will be replacing with a nice, big, powerful desktop this summer. I'm keeping the laptop and will be taking it to college with the desktop.

What I was wondering about is if a tablet would augment these nicely? After using an iPad and kindle a bit I'm more open to them. I was thinking of using one to carry books on, record lectures, write notes (stylus), to keep track of assignments, photograph whiteboards with diagrams, and probably do some file editing. Movies and music will probably find their way on but frankly those will be used on the desktop the majority of the time. Games are an absolutely minute if not nonexistent factor.

So, I guess for requirements I need at least 16gb of storage and the ability to attach a portable hard drive to it (adapters are fine), a camera on the back, a decent mic to record lectures (though I'll probably end up buying a more directional mic), and I'll need it to function well with windows and engineering software.

So now that I've used a good portion if your time, tablet or no tablet? This tablet or that tablet?

 

[hang-the-9]

The engineering sofware probably tosses out most tablets unless you are going to look at Windows based tablets. But then you may as well carry the laptop due to cost and having to move around files among 3 devices.

You need to make a list of the software you will be running and then look in the app stores for the tablets to see which ones have what you need. My daughter is going to get a Windows RT tablet because she wanted Office, and it comes with a keyboard for decent cost.

 

[crosswalk]

The engineering sofware probably tosses out most tablets unless you are going to look at Windows based tablets. But then you may as well carry the laptop due to cost and having to move around files among 3 devices.

You need to make a list of the software you will be running and then look in the app stores for the tablets to see which ones have what you need. My daughter is going to get a Windows RT tablet because she wanted Office, and it comes with a keyboard for decent cost.

Thanks for the reply. I need to ask around at some schools to see what kind of software they are running. I have some friends I can ask about using tablets in college.