iPad for college Part 4: Accessories and Peripherals

As you take your iPad to college you may find out that what you get out of the box and from the App Store is not enough. You may find that you need some hardware solutions to compliment your iPads usefulness. Here are a few types of accessories that you may find useful.

Cases and covers: these are probably the most common iPad accessories. There are thousands to choose from. They range from standard Apple smart covers to teddybears with tummy screens. The important thing is to get one that matches your needs and style.

Keyboards: If you are using your iPad as your main computing device at college you will probably want to have an external keyboard for it. Particularly for writing all those research papers. Just like cases, there are tons of iPad keyboards to choose from. In fact, some keyboards are cases and some cases are keyboards. Almost all the keyboards now connect to the iPad via Bluetooth. If you need help connecting one check out my tutorial here.

Styli: If you want to take handwritten notes, draw, or do photo editing, you may find it useful to have a stylus instead of just your finger. There are many different styli on the market ranging anywhere from 10¢ to almost $100.
Most styli have a rubbery tip to mimic the conductive nature of a human finger on a capacitive screen. The only big difference in choosing one of these styli is the size, weight, color of the barrel. Other than that they essentially write the same. My recommendation, if you are going to get on of these, is to buy one in the <$1.00 range to see if you it like it before investing in something more expensive.
But my real recommendation on a stylus is to go one of the versions of the Jot from Adonit. They are currently the only precision styli that I know of. Because they use an innovative capacitive disk instead of a rubber tip they actually mimic the way you would write with a ball point pen. I will be doing a full review of them soon.

Hotspot -- if you have a wifi only iPad you may want to consider getting a hotspot to provide yourself with Internet when you are away from wifi. This probably isn't necessary, but can be useful if you need to travel a lot or have an unreliable home or school connection.
There are a lot of different options here as well. My recommendation is the Karma hotspot if it has coverage in your area, you can read a full review here. Another good option is if you are already paying for data on a smartphone you may just be able to turn that phone on as a hotspot depending on your carrier plan.  Also most of the major carriers and prepaid companies offer the option of getting a hotspot with month to month data.

Wi-drive -- one of the issues that can arise from going all iPad is a lack of memory. If you are smart about cloud storage that can help with the problem, but if you are consistently running out of space on your device you may want to consider getting an external wi-drive to help out. The wi-drive connects with your iPad of wifi and allows you to store your files remotely. This is especially useful for things like videos that tend to eat up a lot of the iPad's limited memory.

Camera kit -- if you are using a camera other than the one built into the iPad or an iPhone you will need a camera kit to transfer your photos from your memory card to the photo app. I have never used one myself so I can't make any recommendations based on personal experience. The other option is to get an eye-fi card for your camera and transfer them via wifi.

Apple TV -- if you have an HDTV at your dorm or apparmtent you may want to consider getting an Apple TV. Besides allowing you living room access to all of your iTunes content, the Apple TV will let you mirror whatever is on your iPad onto your television screen. This has the effect of creating a big screen monitor for your iPad. This is awesome for playing video games, ahem, I mean working on homework.

Well guys, I know there is a lot there, remember you don't necessarily need all or any of these. Decking out your iPad can end up getting very expensive. Remember to evaluate each choice based on your needs and budget.

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iPad for College Part 3: Useful Apps

Previously I discussed apps that are really essential to have if you are using an iPad at college, especially if you are not also using a laptop. Also in this series I discussed setting up an iPad for college and how to survive without Microsoft Office. Now I would like to talk about some apps that are useful to have which did not fit into the necessary category. 

Prezi -- Some people love it, some people hate it, most people just haven't got a clue how to actually use it. For those who will put in the time to learn to do a Prezi well, it is an excellent piece of free collaboration and presentation software. Unfortunately the iPad version still lacks a lot of features from the online version, but it is good for beginning projects and brainstorming, but you will have to add the details from a browser version later. The iPad version is also great for presenting if you have an iPad to projector adaptor.

Adobe Reader -- If your college experience is anything like mine, you will read more PDFs than you can count. I use to read these all on my laptop in the early days, the iPad or a Kindle provides a much better experience. While the iPad can open up PDFs by default and can also send then to iBooks, I prefer to use adobe reader for its annotation abilities and easy to use interface. 

iMovie -- If you are doing a lot of video production you are going to want something with a much bigger screen than either sized iPad, but if you just want to do some quick work on the fly than you will probably want this app. 

Penultimate -- This is the sketch pad notebook app made by Evernote. It is a fairly simple app, which is on of the really nice things about it. It is great for taking handwritten notes electronically. It has options for blank, lined, or graph paper,so it is useful in many different classes and settings. All you notes get saved in Evernote which does text recognition on your hand writing.

Skitch -- Another Evernote produced app, Skitch is for annotation. It allows you to draw over the top of pictures, screenshots, or PDFs. It makes explaining things really easy. I use it annotate most of the screenshots I share on this blog.

LinkedIn -- Most college students are using Facebook and Twitter, but LinkedIn is another important network that they should begin to build a strong professional presence on. Much of the business world is moving online and LinkedIn serves as your virtual, searchable, online résumé. They have been making a lot of improvements to the app over the past few months, it still is not fully fuctional, but it is getting there.

Wikipedia -- Professors may not all be agreed on Wikipedia yet, but students mostly are. It is probably the best place to gain quick information in terms you can understand, it can give you a summary and explanation of almost anything, often better than your teacher. There are a lot of different apps that can hook you into Wikipedia, choose one that you like, I use wikipanion.

iTunesU -- sometimes you just need a little extra explanation about a subject, or you can't take a course because you don't have time, but you would love to learn the about it. iTunesU has thousands of lectures that can help you, and they are all free! 

Well, this is certainly not an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start. Next in this series I will be talking about accessories and peripherals to use with the iPad in college. 

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College Apps: What about Microsoft Office on the iPad?

Note: This post was written before Microsoft released Office for iPad. I still stand by what I wrote here though, and you can read my thoughts on office for iPad in this post.

Now let's answer that crucial question:

 

What about Office?

If you have lived on this planet anytime since 1998 chances are you've been wound up in the world of Microsoft office. Unfortunately our world seems to run on this bloated suite of software, and if all you have is an iPad your going to run into trouble right off the bat. For some odd reason Microsoft has never decided to bless the most popular tablet in the world with its good graces. Although a couple months back they did decide to make a stupid Office version for iPhone, available only to 365 subscribers. There's some typical Redmond innovation for you.

The good news is that if the iPad has taught the us anything it is that we don't need Microsoft, or Office, anymore. There have been a number of Office competitors released for the iPad since its creation, personally I prefer Apple's own suite:
iWork Suite -- it turns out that for years Apple has been making a suite that is as good if not better than the three basic Microsoft Office offerings. They can be had for a much lower cost as well. The best part is that they allow exporting in all of the MS Office file formats, making it easy for you to share files with you unenlightened classmates and teachers.

• Pages -- is a breath of fresh air after years of the tortuous experience of MS word for years. The iPad version is clean and easy to use. 
• Numbers -- is an excellent, easy to use, spreadsheet program. But, as I said earlier, it is the area of iWork that is the most lacking to advanced users. However, that type of advanced work is really best done on a computer still, the iPad just isn't ready for it yet. 
• Keynote -- has been Apple's strongest iWork offering on the Mac offering a much more intuitive experience than MS PowerPoint. On the iPad it has seen a little bit of trouble with issues entering text, but it is still the most robust presentation software out there for a mobile device.

iCloud -- there is even more good news for students going iPad only at college. Apple has recently rolled out the iWork suite to iCloud. This means that if you choose to save your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to iCloud you can access and edit them from any computer with a web browser. Since most students have access to school computer labs this is the perfect solution for those times when you need more screen space or a large keyboard. 

There you have it, the easy way to leave Microsoft Office behind and just use your iPad. If you have found any other apps that make good substitutes I would like to hear about them. Tweet at me or leave a comment. I would especially like to hear if you've got good substitutes for the less known portions of Office.

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Thanks for reading, and remember, live better (you can start by not using Office anymore).

Update on 9/10/13: Apple has just said that all new iOS devices get iWork for free! So now there is really no reason to care one bit about office.

iPad for college Part 2: Necessary Apps

Now that you have your iPad all set up and ready for college your going to need some apps for it right? It's not going to do you much good as only a calendar and email device. As I mentioned before with my little brother at college for the first time taking only an iPad as his computer I came up with a list of apps I thought would be essential for him to have. Most of these are also recommended by Apple under their apps for college section in the App Store.

• Pages -- is a beautiful and fully functional word processor for writing all of those papers you'll be getting assigned soon.
• Numbers -- is a very easy to understand and use spreadsheet program. It creates great looking graphics as well. One word of caution though, if you are an advanced MS excel user in a CS, mathematic, of scientific field you will find that Numbers on an iPad may not be able to handle everything you want it to, you are probably one of the people who still needs a laptop. 
• Keynote -- Is a great app for making presentations that look wonderful. It will allow you to email them out in a variety of formats so that you can easily collaborate with classmates on group assignments.
• Evernote -- will be your new best friend in college. It will help you keep track of all your notes, and is a great place to organize research, draft assignments, and just about anything else you might need. It is probably the most indispensable app outside of your calendar and email. My full review is here.

iPad for college Part 1: How to set it up

Here we are quickly approaching the start of another school year. Many people are returning to college, many are starting for the first time. The question always arises this time of year, what do I need to do to set up my iPad for college? Are there special apps or accessories that I need?

Among those headed to the ivory towers of knowledge for the first time is one of my own little brothers. And he is the first among the Nielsen siblings to go without a laptop. He is going to be primarily using his iPad 2 as his main computing device. Naturally, I took some time a few weeks ago to help him get it set up for this new experience. It was time to unload some games and movies and free up some space for more educational pursuits.