Although iPads may seem like the perfect solution to all our problems–like carrying around a dozen or so pounds of books–they really don’t seem to help. My opinion may change as I use it more, but for now I can’t say that I’m their biggest fan. After playing around with the iPad for an hour or so yesterday, there weren’t many features that would prove useful. Sure it has a voice recorder, but I’ve got my iPod nano to do that (which happens to be about 100 times smaller). Sure I can take notes, but I just use a sheet of paper instead. Also, not being able to have my hands on they keyboard without having to worry about typing gibberish is a huge pain. It is a lot slower than using a tangible keyboard, which means I probably won’t use it for writing articles. Imagine texting a two page essay… it doesn’t sound too appealing. Not to mention that I can easily wait a hour or so and just go home and use my iMac instead. What am I going to do, write an article while doing a track workout? Another thing heavily advocated about the iPad was that it would replace my heavy backpack. That isn’t entirely true. It would just be an addition to it. It’s not like I can have a digital copy of an AP physics textbook published in the late nineties. And I can’t eat a digital copy of my lunch, or run in a digital copy of my shoes (unless I really want to break my iPad). I don’t like hating on the iPad so much because it is a neat piece of tech, but its uses for school seem to be close to none.