Best Laptop for FSU

Pasbal
Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:51:41 +0000

Digital textbooks are awful in my opinion. Their cost is only marginally better than new- and that’s IF you’re lucky enough to have them available digitally in the first place. Digital textbooks might be the future, but they aren’t the now- I’ve only had a few textbooks actually have a digital format available that didn’t also require me to buy either an access code online or a copy of the book anyway. Plus as you pointed out, no selling textbooks back, and the digital versions are more expensive than a used copy of the book, which are both big drawbacks.

An iPad also isn’t much smaller than a laptop (aside from weight wise). And typing on the keyboard might sound great, but good lucky trying that in a class where the desks are about 15" x 15" in size. The cost is also another thing. An iPad can run just as much, if not more, than a decent laptop, and its functionality is still limited.
Finally, an iPad doesn’t have any ethernet capabilities, which is important to consider since a good part of campus isn’t yet covered by WiFi (and many dorms don’t have WiFi either).

If she has a PC in addition to an iPad, that might help, but I don’t think just an iPad is really all that feasible of an option by itself.