technical advice needed for start of med school!

[DrHogFan]

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Here's my dilemma;

With my fiancée and my tax returns this year we are saving most of it for the move and for fees for medical school. But she really wants to get me a birthday/congrats on getting into med school present. We were thinking a shiny new Ipad 2 would be a great gift for a new med student. The school I am most likely to be attending pending an "official" acceptance uses the Vital Source software and all books are electronic.😍 I have a laptop already that has the nickname of "the Beast" its a rather large and cumbersome gaming laptop that I am always tweaking and unfortunately restoring, therefore I would hate to have to lose documents and books mid semester on it.

My question is this with all the note taking and document apps, along with a stylus would an Ipad be feasible to use taking notes while in class, or should I go with a Macbook and dedicate it strictly to school work?

Before all of the "you already have a laptop and won't be gaming in med school" responses, my fiancée has a relic Dell laptop. Therefore, I plan on incorporating the beast as a desktop replacement for the family, and keep it permanently docked on a desk if I get the Macbook. But I have been drooling over the new Ipads for a month now.

Any Ipad users that could give me some advice, or input on its note taking abilities? I just feel reading text books from an Ipad would be more comfortable than a laptop when out of class. Thanks in advance!

 

[Bostonredsox]

Here's my dilemma;

With my fiancée and my tax returns this year we are saving most of it for the move and for fees for medical school. But she really wants to get me a birthday/congrats on getting into med school present. We were thinking a shiny new Ipad 2 would be a great gift for a new med student. The school I am most likely to be attending pending an "official" acceptance uses the Vital Source software and all books are electronic.😍 I have a laptop already that has the nickname of "the Beast" its a rather large and cumbersome gaming laptop that I am always tweaking and unfortunately restoring, therefore I would hate to have to lose documents and books mid semester on it.

My question is this with all the note taking and document apps, along with a stylus would an Ipad be feasible to use taking notes while in class, or should I go with a Macbook and dedicate it strictly to school work?

Before all of the "you already have a laptop and won't be gaming in med school" responses, my fiancée has a relic Dell laptop. Therefore, I plan on incorporating the beast as a desktop replacement for the family, and keep it permanently docked on a desk if I get the Macbook. But I have been drooling over the new Ipads for a month now.

Any Ipad users that could give me some advice, or input on its note taking abilities? I just feel reading text books from an Ipad would be more comfortable than a laptop when out of class. Thanks in advance!

Not sure. where I went to med school they gave us powerpoint printout packets for every lecture and we jsut studied those, as the test questions came from them. We highlighted and made handwritten notes on the packets. I guess you could access the packets through the schools website after the lecture but it wouldn't have helped you to take notes during the lecture. And as for books, i only owned 2 durign school, Netters dissector and Harrisons. Didn't buy another book till i got review books for step 1. Kinda depends on how your school presents lecture material too you.

 

[Damia]

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[DrHogFan]

It's great for reading novels, but I still like the feel of a real textbook in my hand, where I can quickly and easily get to the desired page. Also, so far the apps for reading textbooks are not that great and really, really need a lot of work to be useful for students.

Having said that, it is excellent for lectures. I use an app called SoundNote that records while you either type or draw (easy to switch between without accidentally deleting everything, a common idiocy of many iPad note apps) which is most awesome because it inputs the time of the recording when you make your notes a PDF - so you can find the time you spaced out and figure out what you missed. 🙂

So, one vote for and against in a single post. Exciting. 😉

UPDATE:
If you do get one, the free apps Evernote and Dropbox are your new best friends, and you should pay for Evernote to save notebooks on your iPad. Also, if you like the GTD philosophy OmniFocus is AMAZING (and incredibly expensive, but such is life).

All our textbooks at this school are electronic. I suppose I could go out and buy the textbook, but I like the idea of having them all on the iPad, along with all my slides and notes. I mainly wanted to know how quick and easy is it taking notes on the iPad, I know using the iAnnotate app you can take notes over pdf or ptt files. The software/app used is the Vital Source software. Never had any experience with it, but I read where it allows annotations as well. I like the idea of being able to type "Ventricular Fibrillation" and pulling it from ALL my books at once in the app.

 

[jphwki82]

I have an Ipad, and have a ton of textbooks on it. If you use good reader, you can take notes and highlight the book like you would with the paper version. As mentioned above, our school uses paper based course packs. However, I have a friend that opted to scan and upload all his course packs to his Ipad. It seemed like to much of a time commitment for me. Our school is contemplating going to electronic course packs. It seems that schools are heading in the electronic direction, but that side of things is lagging behind the technology. Also, I use good reader for articles for journal club meetings. Also, there are a few websites that you can hunt down some free textbooks as well. My issue with it is that our schools lectures use silverlite, and Ipad doesn't have any app to support it. Thus, I can't watch any lectures online, but can listen to the mp3 version.

 

[HockeyDr09]

Here's my dilemma;

With my fiancée and my tax returns this year we are saving most of it for the move and for fees for medical school. But she really wants to get me a birthday/congrats on getting into med school present. We were thinking a shiny new Ipad 2 would be a great gift for a new med student. The school I am most likely to be attending pending an "official" acceptance uses the Vital Source software and all books are electronic.😍 I have a laptop already that has the nickname of "the Beast" its a rather large and cumbersome gaming laptop that I am always tweaking and unfortunately restoring, therefore I would hate to have to lose documents and books mid semester on it.

My question is this with all the note taking and document apps, along with a stylus would an Ipad be feasible to use taking notes while in class, or should I go with a Macbook and dedicate it strictly to school work?

Before all of the "you already have a laptop and won't be gaming in med school" responses, my fiancée has a relic Dell laptop. Therefore, I plan on incorporating the beast as a desktop replacement for the family, and keep it permanently docked on a desk if I get the Macbook. But I have been drooling over the new Ipads for a month now.

Any Ipad users that could give me some advice, or input on its note taking abilities? I just feel reading text books from an Ipad would be more comfortable than a laptop when out of class. Thanks in advance!

Have you considered getting a solid 13" or 14" notebook for a grand instead of a macbook/ipad? You could partition the drive and store all your textbooks (if you're a fan of keeping things separate) and then sending all your powerpoints to OneNote? I have been playing around with OneNote 2010 lately and it's pretty awesome. I picked up a beastly 14.5" HP Envy with a 256GB SSD for <$1000 with a coupon code. I have a 25% a $1000 if you're interested. I'm not trying to bash apple (I do however, think there notebooks are extremely over priced) but I figured I'd throw out another option just in case you were interested.

 

[DrHogFan]

Thank you guys so much for the input! I looked up the Good Reader app and it seems similar to iAnnotate, so it's probably perfect for what I'm aiming to do. I have thought about another notebook besides a mac or iPad, but I would much rather have a mac for school. I am sort of a mac fan boy. I don't want to start a PC vs Mac argument. I don't need people telling me why I shouldn't waste money on a mac, and go with PC... I know the facts and personal preference is just that.

All have given good advice. I think with all of our books being eBooks, I am going to go with the iPad. What I guess I was looking for was someone saying "Oh wait, I've been in this boat, I tried taking lecture notes on the iPad, and it just blows!" I like the idea of having everything I need to study on the device and not have to tote a computer or anything with me, and I can virtually pop it out anytime and do a quick review. I'm a big paper and pen guy, not much for computer note taking, but I tend to lose my paper and pen notes, and thought the iPad could give similar experience without the paper.