I use my iPad as a 90% replacement for my net book. I use 'dropbox' to hold all of my files for excel and word documents. I also use 'documents to go' for read, edit and create my office documents on my iPad as well as my droid phone. The only thing I do not use my iPad for is accounting work. I still use my desktop, notebook or net book for those tasks.

Its important to mention that the iPad isn't really meant to be stand alone, you need access to a full computer so you can sync to iTunes. So if your dead laptop was your only computing device I wouldn't replace it with an iPad.

I don't do much with presentations but for notes I really like Office2 HD and its integration with DropBox which makes the notes accessible from my phone (Android) work PC (Ubuntu) and laptop (XP).

Something you might want to consider is if any of your future courses might require you to install specific software. I had this frequently in my courses but I was a Information Systems major so that may not be true for other majors.

lap tops. Put an iPad on your wish list right after you purchase a new laptop.

Office HD has light versions of both Word and Excel, and its cheap.

Note Taker HD is a very nice utility for taking notes with a stylus.

I am a retired professor of EE, still interested in research---and I wouldn't be without my iPad for reading papers in .pdf format (Good Reader is very nice, allowing annotations).

Thanks alot for the help guys

I have a desktop pc, so thats no problem.
But one thing ive been thinking about... can u install flash on it? or do u have to jailbreak it first? :/

Flash doesn't even work very well when you do jailbreak it.

No way. We are talking Apple here.