Cloud computing and the iPad

A reporter the other day asked me how much storage our iPads had. While I know they are 16GB, it didn't occur to me until after the interview how little it mattered. The reason is that so much of what we are doing with the iPads is cloud-based. By that I mean we are basically storing most of our data on other people's computers and very little data resides on the iPad itself. I can access data from DropBox (stored most graciously for free by dropbox.com) and I can access network drives at ND by connecting wirelessly to my personal drive. Now that I think about it, I'm basically using the iPad as my own thin client "dummy terminal" (mainframes here we come ...again). HOWEVER, it was quickly pointed out to me by my students that the 16GB is a limitation when you have 3,000 songs in your iTunes account. See how nice it is to have the younger generation always available to offer a new viewpoint.