The iPad appears to be a really great thing for college students (or anyone taking classes or going to educational seminars or training.
You can down load books, it has Notes and appears to have a pretty good sized touch keypad in landscape mode. There is the plus of Internet access with either WiFi or 3G and special rates on 3G access.
The iPad is 7.5 X 9.5 inches and 1/2 inch thick – wieght 1.5 lbs – imagine a device where one can have their textbooks, their class notebooks, Internet access for looking things up and getting reference and fill in material. Add iWork and now you have a small light device that you can store your textbooks, take class notes, do reports, get and send email.
The possibilities of the iPad simply amaze me – when I was in college one carried books for each class, notebooks for each class, one would take notes as the instructor presented the material, we had to spend hours in the college library and far too often there would be only one copy of needed books and that one would be in use. One would go back to their dorm and type — as in manual portable typewriter — out class notes and then spend hours doing reports and home work. If you made a typing error it meant re typing the page.
The Internet and computers really have made changes in how students learn. I can find more detailed information in 5 or 10 minutes these days than was possible after spending hours or even days at the college library.
My guess is that the iPad will become very popular with college students and it looks like even an old geezer like me from the “boomer” generation could get a whole lot of use out of an iPad. I know I really like and use my iPhone – the bigger screen and keybaord of the iPad is really appealing. It will be more than a month before anyone can actually see on of these – so far it looks more useful than a Netbook.
I’d like to see how well I can read an 8 1/2″ x 11″ page in a PDF file. If it’s readable, then I can leave about 6″ of binders home every week I have to fly out to teach a BES class.
I does need both USB and media ports. It would help if it could run more than one program at a time too. Maybe people will be jailbreaking them as soon as they open the box.
I might buy one anyhow.
The iPhone can do Media out and it looks like iPad will be able to also. At the product launch Apple was connecting the iPad to the big screen. This is done by using either a Composite AV cable or Component AV Cable. So far as USB one of the accessories for the iPad allows a camera card or USB in to load photos from a digital camera.