The biggest problem is third-party software support. iPads are great right now for a lot of creative work, and in theory capable of a lot more in their current

The biggest problem is third-party software support. iPads are great right now for a lot of creative work, and in theory capable of a lot more in their current incarnation, but if you can only afford one computer and you know e.g. your history course next semester is going to force you to install IE6 and log in to some crusty web thing that relies on popups and embedded ActiveX controls (exaggerating, but you get the point), what are you going to buy? It's not really a choice at all, when you think about it. Techy use cases like building and running "custom" code are unsupported on a more fundamental level, but I'd call that a special case. Slightly more concerning is how tightly locked-down the app store is.