I'll be surprised if the iPad doesn't dip to $400 this year, and I'd be shocked if schools don't get bulk discounts on top of that. And there's no reason to assume that $15 is the absolute minimum price - we'll see free alternatives in the near future.
I'm jealous of the kids - I remember lugging around 30 pounds of books and a bulky binder everywhere, and even then making frequent locker runs. And I have few fond memories of textbooks in technical subjects, where a few simple demonstrations (now embedable!) could often go further than a mountain of diagrams and words.
On that note, is the iPad + keyboard close enough to a laptop that it can replace it for students in college? Obviously not for engineering students, but possibly good enough for liberal arts?
Writing a paper would be an enormous pain. Typing text is fine, but editing is frustrating. Selecting text with your finger is imprecise, pasting is finicky, and jumping around a document quickly is pretty tough.
I've had the same experience with editing text, it gets really frustrating at times. I often find it's faster to delete chunks of text and rewrite them rather than edit. (I type reasonably quickly on the iPad.)
But now that I think about it, if you actually have a keyboard attached to the device this is a solved problem. Just port emacs or vi.
Why port? Just ssh to a terminal somewhere in your university. Pop open emacs/vim and typset with TeX. I did this with my netbook a couple times. Even let me print the paper.
I'm jealous of the kids - I remember lugging around 30 pounds of books and a bulky binder everywhere, and even then making frequent locker runs. And I have few fond memories of textbooks in technical subjects, where a few simple demonstrations (now embedable!) could often go further than a mountain of diagrams and words.