One of the most likely places that you’ll see a Tablet PC is at a school or university. Tablet PCs are especially handy in university for two reasons:

1. Digital note taking and recording
2. Mobile computing.

Of course, a regular laptop can do mobile computing.  However any time you need to take notes, a Tablet PC comes into its own league.  That’s because for taking notes a regular laptop with keyboard is:

• Too slow
• Too noisy
• Too distracting
• Too difficult to balance.

Note: Many people tell me that they can type faster than they write. That might be true when handwriting an email using text recognition, but not usually for note taking when text recognition doesn’t matter.

Watch the Microsoft Tablet PC Education Presentation

A Tablet PC allows a student to be organised to an unprecedented degree. These are just some of the things that a Tablet PC will allow you to do:

• Organise lecture notes into a digital folder
• Audio record lectures with your notes (with Microsoft OneNote)
• Carry your entire note history, handouts and recordings with you at all times
• Access the Internet from anywhere with Wi-fi or 3G.

The only drawback for many students is the higher price of a Tablet PC. So the question is, will it add value to your education? If it can help you to get organised, to get ahead and pass exams then why wouldn’t it be worth it?

Read Microsoft’s top 10 benefits of Tablet PCs in education.

Tablet PCs are great tools of education. Students use tablet PCs for things like taking notes, getting organised and composing music. And thanks to Microsoft’s Windows XP Tablet PC power toys, students can experiment with Newton’s laws too.

From the Tablet PC power toys page:

Bring your drawings to life with the Physics Illustrator, a motion simulator for the Tablet PC. Simply draw two-dimensional bodies, connect them in various ways, and apply forces, then watch as animation makes the bodies move, collide, and interact.

The Tablet PC physics tool is hours of fun, and you might just learn something too!