A pair of articles from Reuters and USA Today try to extrapolate the buying habits of students returning to college, which would be sort of interesting if there were some hard numbers, but they’re mostly a “Talk to Analysts, See What They Like,” sort of thing. Still, it’s good to hear that Averatec’s C3500 Tablet PC is selling well; I haven’t used one, but the price is right, for sure. Other stalwarts like Palms and Sidekicks and iPods aren’t that surprising, but the USA Today article, claiming the success of the iPod this year is causing more students to purchase Apple laptops (specifically iBooks) is curious. I’m a little sketched, honestly, but I’m looking forward to the numbers later this year. Even Apple themselves has said they don’t really expect the iPod to translate into increased sales numbers for the Mac.
And even if more students are using Macs, it’s not as if that means they’ll continue to use them out in the real world. I mean, everybody that that first smoked pot in college immediately stopped on the day they graduated, right?
Read – PluggedIn: Multifunction Devices Draw Back-To-School Crowd [Reuters (Yahoo)]
Read – Students crazy about iPod follow the music to Apple laptops [USAToday (Yahoo)]
