My granddaughter starts college in September and I was thinking of getting her a laptop. But that might be my old school thinking. What's the better option for school now a days, a laptop or tablet?

Thanks for any insights.

I'd say go with a laptop. A physical keyboard is much better to type on for reports and documents. Though I'm also the guy who brings a laptop and a mechanical keyboard to class.

Laptop, more versitile, actually keyboard and probably cheaper .

Probably showing my age a little here, but students who are actually paying attention have either in class? Anyone I saw with one in class at college was using it to entertain themselves while still getting credit for attendance in a class that had an attendance policy. I carried mine in my backpack to use in the library between classes and after classes to do schoolwork, but it never came out in a classroom. I graduated in 2009 for reference.

I would also recommend a laptop, but some may disagree...

It also depends on their major. Some of my courses required that we used a computer in class. (I'm an Information Assurance major). We could bring our own or use the one's provided by the class. I chose to bring my own.

In other ways, I prefered to take my notes with a laptop much more than hand writing them as well.

Tablets are definitely the prevailing trend. Laptops are big and bulky. A tablet would also make e-textbooks (becoming more and more common and sometimes even the only option) much easier to digest. Reading an e-textbook on a laptop is terrible (and reading textbooks is often bad enough to begin with ). For ebooks alone I'd recommend a tablet. Also, at least at my campus, a lot of desks weren't really big enough for laptops, and definitely not for laptops and a notepad. Tablets fit much more easily on them.

To counter the keyboard complaint: many tablets have keyboard accessories. For others there are bluetooth keyboards. I personally have http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Ultra-Slim-Aluminum-Keyboard-Windows/dp/B00BKW2410 and am quite satisfied with it.

However, if the person in question has no desktop/laptop already, they may need something more capable than an Android or iOS tablet. My recommendtion would be the http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Pro-3/productID.300190600 or the http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surface-256GB-Dark-Titanium/dp/B00FRLYUOE. If you go either of these routes I would also suggest Getting a large monitor to accompany it for their room. That way they can plug it into there and work on a bigger screen when they are in the middle of research/papers.

I hate laptops, and I've pretty much always hated laptops. Laptops always were a compromise IMO. Never really good at anything, just something we had to deal with for a long time. We don't have to deal with them anymore, as much better alternatives exist. They are big, bulky, and have worse battery life than tablets. I own one Android tablet and a Surface Pro 2. I also have a work laptops (given to me by work) but when I get to work I dock that into a station and it's effectively a desktop (with a slower processor...). I never use that laptop at home for not-work because my desktop is superior and on the go my surface pro or nexus 10 are superior (depending on what I need to do).

Oh come on I am younger than you. I graduated in 2013 (if you're talking about highschool)

Now, I say you should go with a Laptop, OP. It doesn't have an ocean of funny apps to spend your free time, but since you want one of them for School matters, well, Laptop allows you to write a lot faster and has several things to make works.

Laptop

I'd go with a (small) laptop. If you get a 13" screen, you have everything a tablet has, and potentially for cheaper, while also having far more capabilities (more software, actual keyboard...).Unless she's doing something computationally-intensive (engineering, CS, math on occasion...), I'd go with a Chromebook. They're not powerful, but they are cheap and have insane battery life. A Toshiba Chromebook 2 is nice, lightweight, keyboard and mousepad are decent and I can get 10+ hours out of the batter with light usage. I would definitely go with one of the 4GB RAM models (like the 1920x1080 Toshiba Chromebook 2), as you can feel the lack of RAM on the 2GB models (if I go to Google News and open more than two articles, I start to lag).