Regardless of the personal likes and dislikes for various technology gadgets, one has to accept how each of them affects our lives. Taking the example of iPad, we can easily understand the case as this is one of the most in demand device, which received praise for its innovativeness but was also criticized for not being able to meet the customers’ expectations. Students, particularly the ones living in dorms are the target market for the iPad because it serves their multidimensional necessities. If you are a parent or guardian, and wish to buy an iPad for your siblings/kids, heed to the suggestions below and increase its standard performance for your loved ones.

Purchase decisions are always made after keeping the actual need in the mind, so judge the case in that sense. What are the needs of the students living in dorm? How can iPad can help them meet those needs? Let us look at the case from two perspectives.

Academic Perspective

Students have to do certain academic projects, read and search on the web and finally come up with a prepared assignment. If you look at recent Apple updates, iBooks 2 application has been launched with new and creative look. This enables students to read a variety of books on their iPad. The price for iBook 2 has been fixed at $14.99 or even less in certain conditions. If you compare the price of a typical college course material with the price of iPad ($499 or so), the iPad enjoys great price advantage. Money matters the most for student community, so iPad having iBooks 2 can be highly advantageous.

Additionally, the iWork applications enable students to enjoy the Microsoft Office experience at their iPad. So, they will not need a laptop, they can comfortably do their necessary tasks at iPad. Some people might question that iPad does not have a keyboard, remember, you can always buy one as additional accessory. Moreover, there are lots of iOS applications which enable students to track their time, manage their lives, and expand their knowledge horizon.

In simple words, ask your loved ones to use relevant apps on their iPad, as if they are able to do this, their iPad experience will not only enhance but also enable them to save lots of costs. However, there is one more perspective, which to me, is more important than the academic perspective and that is family perspective.

Family Perspective

People living in hostels, particularly students become very sensitive as they are away from their parents or guardians. Suppose you are in Ireland, while your younger brother, sister, or son is pursuing his studies in Virginia or California State of the US. The family perspective becomes more important because he has certain needs and problems, where getting in touch with family is must. How iPad can help you in this regarded? Here, iPad can create magic with the help of VoIP app.

I am sure you might have heard about that, it’s a process of making regular voice calls using internet connections. Almost everyone is familiar with Skype to Skype calls, however, Skype is primarily a PC application (although now it can be used on smart phones). In the same way, if one downloads VoIP apps from Apple Store, one can easily run the signed up services at the iPad. Every big name of the industry; Ooma, Vonage, Axvoice, Comcast, Skype have their applications for iPad and smart phones.

With VoIP, people can get in touch with family without any cost concerns. Just imagine making unlimited local as well as international calls for $8 monthly only with no $30 start up fee like strings attached. Moreover, it is a universal truth that voice over IP is much cheaper than landlines. One can make video calls, conference calls and enjoy many other features of VoIP services on the iPad within the same price.

I don’t know, how much of you are satisfied with the iPad performance as a gadget, but I am sure that if you have one and don’t want to buy a notebook, the above suggestions can work in your case as they will have astonishing impact on the performance and efficiency of your iPad.

Thanks to Derek Miller for this guest post. He is a free lance writer and you can contact him here.