Quote:
Originally Posted by unboggling
@ petermillard & Rob_E & LatinandGreek. Agree it'd be nice to have a tablet as well as a laptop, for portability as well as reading textbooks in electronic form, and even reading any fiction for lit classes. I don't believe my niece owns an e-ink reader, but she's focusing on biology/pre-med and probably won't read a lot of fiction like a lit major would. Tablets such as iPad are better than e-ink devices for PDFs or other complex-formatted textbooks, particularly with science-related graphics. [EDIT: Though AFAIK, unless something changed in the last year or so, iPad can only deal with ePub and PDF formats. If I'm wrong, and textbooks these days come in formats other than PDF, please advise.]
@ David Munch & Latinandgreek. Re superdrive (cd/dvd drive) on a Mac laptop, what about fixing self-inflicted OS problems when necessary from DVD disk? I've had to do that a few times. Is there a way to repair OSX Lion problems directly through Internet with some kind of Apple network resource including OS repair utilities? I'm still using OSX 10.6.8 rather than Lion so I'm not familiar with recent Lion problems/solutions. Does a Lion-loaded thumb drive with OS repair utilities arrive free along with a new MacBook Air, and if not, what will save the day in an OS emergency?
@afv011. If that's a recommendation for my niece to buy a $100 custom PC, some details on source, availability, and reliability would be helpful.
@my niece. Try Open Office. It's free. A student may not need expensive Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) at all since Open Office handles most of the MS Office formats and commonly-used functionality. http://www.openoffice.org/product/index.html
Not set in stone, let me know if I forgot anything, work-in-progress shopping list:
Hardware:
Laptop
Laptop case
External Hard Disk Drive
Printer (that works with a laptop-supplied-port such as USB)
External Superdrive (if MacBook Air) [Optional, availability OS repair utilites ???]
Phone
Phone case
Phone accessories
Tablet
Tablet Screen Protector
Tablet case
Bluetooth Keyboard
Miscellaneous:
Credit Card
Software for Phone:
- To be determined
Software for Laptop:
- Open Office (free)
- To be determined
Software for Tablet:
- To be determined |
Some big-name textbook publishers like Pearson have their own app for textbooks, I think, so I think that the text is not in PDF form. I may be wrong. They offer their textbooks at roughly half the price of the printed versions, but the textbooks expire after the course ends in many, if not most, cases. They can be viewed on laptops as well. The iPad can deal with other formats using different apps. For example, there is a Kindle app with which one can read mobi files. Come to think of it, I do believe that some textbooks can be purchased through the Amazon ebook store as well. They can be read on a laptop, too.
I believe that the Macbook Air comes with a thumb drive with a copy of the OS. When upgrading the OS it can now be downloaded off of the app store and a copy can be made onto a USB drive. Here is a site describing how to do this:
http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to...or-flash-drive
Just a note: Apple has a presentation coming up on Monday, which is heavily speculated to be regarding an update to the Macbook Pro and Air lineup. You might want to keep an eye out for that. You may want to get a new model, or perhaps you will be able to score a great used laptop at a reduced price from someone who is looking to upgrade.
Open Office is great. I have Open Office, the Apple Office suite and Microsoft Office installed on my laptop. I use Microsoft Office by far the least. I use Pages slightly more than Open Office, but OO has some great features and I find it more zippy that Microsoft Office. There is a lot of great, free software that you will find helpful. Be sure to check out Calibre for ebook cataloguing. Evernote is also great for keeping class notes and projects in order.
Best of luck!