Looking for a tablet for Uni: Advice please?

AndrewD

AndrewD

AndrewD

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Joined
2 Mar 2008
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434
Hi,

I'm looking for a tablet to take to med school with me and have narrowed it down to three potential ones:

- iPad 4th Gen
- Nexus 10
- Galaxy Note 10.1

Are any of these due a refresh in the near future? I want to use these for note taking during lectures, use of power points slides, PDF's and would preferably like them to have a snappy UI?

Thanks !
 
If you can stretch the budget a little you could go for a Windows 8 tablet.

The ThinkPad 2 is lighter then the iPad for example.

There are quite a few with various keyboard docks and active digitisers so you get the Pen for notes.
 
Windows 8 might be better if you plan to view lecture notes. With Android I'm using the Officesuite app, and powerpoint slides appear ok on that, but not 100% perfect compared to Microsoft Office. PDFs on the other hand appear just fine.
 
if you are going to be doing a lot of Office based functions, I would highly recommend a Windows's based tablet / slate rather than that of a Android / iPAD. Also you be able to use a huge range of peripherals, which is another plus. So for a example, you can just use a normal USB to connect to a printer and print out your work. This simple task isn't the same using a iPad or Android tabet.

Also I believe Apple are gearing up for the iPad 5 release pretty shortly.

I'd recommend looking at the follow:

ASUS VivoTab Range
Lenovo Think Pad 2
MS Surface / Surface Pro
 
It's pretty common for peeps to buy a laptop with the intention of using it in lectures. This is just the next evolution of that.

Never actually happens. Pen and paper instead. Spend money on beer.
 
Well, in my case I use the tablet with a pen and paper. Lecturers in my university upload the lecture presentation the day before the actual lecture, and since I usually can't always see the whole board, having it on my tablet allows me to see it right next to my written notes, as well as allowing me to see previous slides if I feel I missed anything out. Use to use a laptop for that but felt it was too bulky.

I could print the lecture slides instead, but it costs money to print :p...

I guess it depends on how the lecture is done itself though, mine is very computer orientated so I find having a tablet very useful for my studies.

EDIT: I also use my tablet to read e-books that I require for my course, saves me a lot of weight from carrying physical versions of it. Sometimes the digital version is cheaper than the physical version as well, money saved ;).
 
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Get an ultrabook. More expensive but an MBA or Series 9 will be not much bigger/heavier and far more useful. You can use it for notes but also work in the library on your own machine which will be a massive bonus.

An ultrabook, more expensive than a normal laptop but because it's so much lighter and thinner you're far more likely to take it with you, especially if you don't necessarily need to take a charger as well. I had several friends with standard 15" laptops and they only brought it in if really needed and had to sit next to a power socket all the time. I had a little 13"er with a good battery life and it unchained me massively.
 
I would go with the advice for a Windows 8 tablet. I'm studying dentistry myself, and used my iPad most of this year. I really hated using it, especially when it came to writing equations or when I wanted to annotate PowerPoints (anatomy ones etc) because it simply couldn't be done!

Only recently did I get a Surface Pro from the US, and having the pen input on that is amazing. Now I import each lecture's PowerPoint into OneNote, and use the pen to add annotations to the slides. Really, really useful, makes me wonder how I ever managed to use the iPad!

The Surface Pro is pricey, but as some people have suggested you could go for the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2, it'll be quite a bit slower but you'll still get the digitiser pen, which is really what you need if you wanting a tablet for note taking.
 
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