A College Student's First Look at the iPad

Written by Chase O. 

Just got my iPad on Thursday and I thought I'd share some of my initial findings.

I thought food would be a good place to start since all college students eat, a lot. This morning I woke up hungry for a delicious Sunday brunch. So after checking my email, I fired up the Epicurious app that comes loaded full of recipes for every meal imaginable. Price: free

Once I got my bacon and cheese-dill-scrambled eggs cooked, I needed to get back to work. Since a majority of my courses no longer use textbooks, I find myself inundated with PDF documents. I was looking for a powerful PDF reader capable of cataloging a large volume of documents and had the ability to annotate documents. I found an ideal solution - iAnnotate Price: $6.99

iAnnotate is great and lets me highlight, scribble notes and underline text, completely eliminating the need for me to print and stable together my readings.

Another favorite of mine are the newspaper apps available on the iPad. The large screen and interactivity make them fun to read. Check out USA Today and NY Times Editor Edition. Price: Free (for now...)

Apple's new iBooks app is the new bookstore at your fingertips. No need to run down to Campus Center to get a novel for that literature class. You can find their digital edition for $9 to $15. If it isn't available in the iBook store check out the Amazon kindle app or the Barnes and Noble ebook store.

During my free time I typically check out Twitter via Twitterific or stream a movie on Netflix via the new Netflix app. Both of which are free.


While getting used to the keyboard takes a few hours, it's worth the effort. With the right tools your iPad can become a productivity machine that can fit in just about any bag and can go anywhere-even the beach. I took mine to Makaha Beach yesterday and it worked flawlessly inside a gallon-sized Ziploc bag.

Enjoy!

Do you have any student tips or favorite apps? Share them with us in the comments section.