Ipad for an engineering major?

I used it for everything....ebooks, web browsing, note taking apps. It's easier to carry around. Papers and stuff I would still use a computer, but everything else was iPad. Go with the iPad over the touch, ESP if part of it will be for school.

You are only in your gen ed classes. Take a walk over to the School Of Engineering and ask some of the students what they recommend. I'm sure there is computer support at the School Of Engineering, ask them. You will also see several TAs/grad students over there, ask them. You probably don't know yet what engineering you are going to take, Mechanical, Civil, Industrial, Electrical, ... Each will have specialized programs that for sure will not run on an iPad.

I understand the engineering aspect of it, and I have no idea what if anything can be done technologically in the future to make ipads more usable for different types of studies. (Could the ipad ever be that strong?)

Anyway, my younger son is a junior and a finance major. He bought one just before he went back to school. Before he got there, he had used up over 22 gb with music, movies, a few games, and some other apps.

He uses it in class for notes, etc. He can have pdf's and books on there. He loves not having to carry around heavy books all day. He's probably used about 32 gb by now. He's had to get the WSJ app, Fin. Times of London app, NY Times, app, etc. and can read on those. He hasn't used pages or documents to go yet, and he write his papers on his imac. He can also do power points on his imac and transfer to a format to show or refer to in class when required. If he's not near his dorm, but needs to check e-mail, he can do that, too.

He can, with the right app, put electronic books on his ipad, too. He still likes to use real books, but if away from his dorm, rather than carry them around, he can look things up on his ipad.

Just an fyi - we started deciding on an ipad 2 for my husband last Christmas but decided to wait to see what the Mar. 2012 ipad was like when it came out. For many different reasons, we decided to go with an ipad 2 32 gb. But I took too long to decide and by thta time, only 16 gb were available. So we went to the on-line Apple store. The 64 gb was a bargain, so we got that. This Summer my son started using it and loved it, so he bought one, too. They don't have retina display, gps, or Siri, but they had no interest. Without the retina display, their ipads never get hot, the battery lasts eight to almost ten hours, and sharges quickly. They both love their ipads, and my son has found it to be more useful and convenient than he thought it would be.

Why don't you talk to other engineering students who you might see using an ipad and ask them the pros and cons of an ipad for their school work. Ask teachers, too. Maybe that will help you decide.

If you decide to buy one, I suggest you get one with the most memory you can afford, because you cannot increase that. And the ipad 4 has the new lightning connection, so read about that.

My sons have ipod touch 2's. They can't think of reading text on those.

Hope this helps.

Message was edited by: appleuser1322

For e-books, I am for and against iPad. The new iBooks update has made it much easier to continuously read books (scroll view), but my problem is that my professors use very specific editions of books, making it difficult to get access to what I need. My school does this for intro classes, forcing students to buy direct from our store.

But, if your current books are through iBooks or Kindle, you should not have a problem. I should note that if you have .epub or .pdf books, you can import those to iBooks.

I loved it for school. Hardly used my MacBook anymore. The one thing the iPad has over the touch is size. Reading ebooks is a lot better on the bigger iPad.

There are a lot of programs you will need as an Engineering student that will not run on an iPad. You need a computer.

BobTheFisherman wrote:

There are a lot of programs you will need as an Engineering student that will not run on an iPad. You need a computer.

I'd have to second that.

You may need to consider that neither an iOS or OS X device will be what you need.It is not out of the question that you will need applications that only run on windows.

If managing your eBooks is the most challenging aspect then you must be a freshman. You will have many programming and design programs that you need to run to complete your upper class engineering assignments. You will also have many papers and research projects to complete. These will require, in some cases, specialized programs.

You will likely need to share papers, research, notes, etc. among project members. You will need to submit papers and projects that are cross disciplinary. You don't want to spend any time at all ensuring that these papers, projects, etc. are consistently compatible with professors, other students, other devices, and class requirements.

Stick with the computer that is used by your professors, other students, and best runs your programs. You will likely have to lug around your MBP anyway, so by getting an iPad I think you will end up lugging around two devices.

Just my opinion. I'm sure others will dissagree and tell you the iPad is the best device for you.

If you feel the MBP is too heavy for you to carry around, and if others are right that the iPad is not enough, you might consider a MacBook Air-- it's much lighter, and you can get it in as small as 11 inches for the screen size.

I'd*.

Surface Pro might come out in Q1 next year, with pen support, full Windows 8 Pro, great specs, and the great keyboard docks. iPad is good for some things, but the Surface excels for education due to OneNote and the amazing keyboard covers.

Is get the Surface if I was a student.