Should I get a tablet for medical school?

I just wanted to briefly talk about tablets and laptops for those starting medical school, and even those who are on rotations right now.

For my basic sciences years I had a laptop and managed to upgrade to a smaller, more powerful one.  It was really helpful because we'd get a ton of study files from the upperclassmen, along with the histology slides we had to study, and the size totaled more than 30 gigabytes of data.  Also, I had enough space on my hard drive to store music and TV shows I bought from iTunes.

Then tablets started getting pretty hyped in the media and I thought about getting one, to carry with me around on rotations and to take notes in lecture.  But I'm not convinced just yet, after a lot of thinking.

I prefer laptops because:
1. Tons of storage space compared to tablets (perfect for all the study material)
2. Built in CD/DVD/Blu-ray player (to install software, watch shows.  The Microsoft Surface doesn't come with an optical drive bulit in)
3. Easy to access programs like MS Word, Excel, etc

To get around the portability issue, I actually bought a cheap Kindle Touch.

Kindle benefits include:
1.  I can just upload PDFs onto it
2.   I can also convert Powerpoint presentations into a PDF and study whenever I'm sitting on a bus during a commute or have some downtime in the hospital
3. It fits great into the white coat pocket and doesn't weigh much
4. Cheaper than a tablet
5. Great battery life (several days at least)
6. Charges with a micro USB cable, like most phones

Kindle drawbacks:
1. No colour screen unless it's a more expensive version
2. You have to format some PDFs quite a bit to read them comfortably
3. Screen is about 6 inches, when I'd rather like some like 10" or 11"

On rotations, you'll never be too far from a desktop computer anyway.  I also currently prefer to use a desktop to write patient notes, because tablets might not always support the EMR at your hospital, and navigating the hospital EMR (labs, imaging, etc) is a lot faster than on a tablet.

On rounds and lecture, I old-school it and bring a notepad and pen, scribble in notes, then when I get home I transfer them into a Word document.  I never really used my old voice recorder from my university days anymore.

Currently, I think that if you have a lot of extra money, and want to read notes of yours in colour, and already have a laptop, a tablet makes a good accessory, but isn't necessary.

Just remember that smartphones can do so much now, like read PDFs and send emails (although they have a smaller screen and battery life is an issue, and editing and sending Word documents for example, can be difficult).

cheers