Student on a budget? There’s an app for that

In reality, I am not one to have the latest gadget to hit the market — I still have a flip phone, my laptop could be used for weight training and my idea of a great video game is Crash Bandicoot for Playstation 1. So when I unwrapped the white matte cardboard box this past Christmas and first laid eyes on my new iPad, I honestly had no idea what I was going to use it for.

Don’t get me wrong — the capabilities of the iPad are astounding, especially when you consider the thousands of apps that are available. Not only are there a ton of iPad-specific apps, which take full advantage of improved graphics and a spacious multi-touchable area, most iPhone apps can run on the iPad as well (although they take up only an iPhone-sized portion of the screen).

Additionally, one of the biggest pluses of the iPad is its ability to multitask. Not only can you listen to music using the iPod app while using the Safari browser, but you can also quickly switch between several different apps without them having to boot up every time.

But at the end of the day, I’m a student, or at least for now I am. So even though this thing of beauty can crank out 8 hours worth of Fruit Ninja HD on a single charge, I was looking for more. Namely, I decided that I would best be able to take advantage of what the iPad had to offer by using it primarily for note-taking, paper reading, web browsing and occasional TV show watching. And being the cheapskate that I am, I wanted the apps that would do all of this for me free of charge.

In the realm of note-taking, the standard Notes app is sufficient for your standard typed notes. And speaking of typing, the touch sensitivity is surprisingly good. After several weeks of use, I can type at near-normal speeds. The only issue I have come across is that if you type more with your fingernails instead of the pads of your fingertips (or if you just have extremely calloused fingers), some taps don’t register. There are cases that double as a keyboard and iPad stand for those who think typing on a touchscreen is unthinkable.

With an auto-correct option available, things turn out relatively coherent — but the occasional inappropriate correction was enough to convince me to turn this feature off. Unfortunately, disabling auto-correct simultaneously disables spell check, so my writings are lacking in squiggly red lines. An annoyance, yes, but a price I am willing to pay so that “lol” doesn’t turn into “Lola” every time I’m on Google Chat.

If writing by hand is more your style, apps like neu.Notes can accommodate you. I still find it a bit strange to write everything down with one finger, but perhaps I just need to embrace my inner finger-painting first grader. One drawback of this, however, is that the notes, while they can be converted to PDF, do not have automatic word recognition, so you can’t go back and search the text later. I have yet to find a good (and don’t forget free!) app that can combine typing and free drawing, like if I want to type notes in Orgo and draw the structure of acetic acid within the same program.

Books and papers look crisp and bright on the LED screen. Thanks to the Gutenberg Project, there are many classics that can be downloaded for free and perused at your leisure. Papers can also be annotated with certain apps, but herein lies a significant annoyance.

The iPad forbids you from downloading any type of file from the Internet. So if you wanted to have the PDF of a journal article stored on your iPad, for example, you would have to download it on your computer, add the file to the app that would be handling it through iTunes, unplug, and then read it. The same goes for TV shows and movies.

In terms of web browsing, many websites, including many of the Google-affiliated ones, offer mobile versions that trim off the excess to make navigation much more streamlined. The connection speed is pretty zippy, especially when doing things that don’t require streaming.

Though the model I have does not have 3G capability (which is an extra $120, in addition to a monthly fee of $15 for 25MB or $25 for 2GB), I haven’t missed it much, since nearly all of the places I use it have Wi-Fi. All in all, the iPad is great for a student. Of course, you have to take into account the snob factor, in which you must assess whether you are willing to be the subject of judging looks from your peers in class. For me, it is a small price to pay for not having to develop back problems from dragging my seven-pound laptop to and fro.