Tablet in Engineering Grad School

[ayudell]

I recently purchased a Nexus 10 but I'm not sure if it is really a productivity tool or just a toy.  Do any engineering students use their tablets (ipad or android) on a regular basis?  How do you use them?

 

I wasn't able to find a good calculator app for the tablet, so that is a major strike.  I have a smartphone which seems to have 75% of the functionality of the tablet.

 

I am starting a PhD program in ME and was hoping to use the tablet for reading papers on the bus, but if that is the only thing I can use it for, I will be printing the papers!

 

 

Thanks!

Edited June 20, 2013 by ayudell

[ak48]

_{I was given an iPad as a college graduate gift but I felt the same way you did: it's a really nice toy, but I couldn't use it regularly for "real" work.}

 

_{However, I gave it to my sister who's started college, and she has been taking notes on it and studying from it, so I guess it depends on the person.}

 

_{What sort of functionality do you need from a tablet? Paper-reading is one, but I'd reckon that any real computation (such as with Matlab, LabView) would require a  laptop for computing power. I could see maybe using a tablet to run the instrumentation, but the iPad doesn't even have a USB port.}

[zapster]

Agree...I prefer a small laptop to any tablet for any kind of "real work"......have not tried the recent laptop-tablets though, has anyone used those?