Depends on your needs. Laptop would be better for essay writing or reports or ppt. Tablet would be better if you intend to take notes, look at lecture slides and other entertainment. Just so you know, you can also borrow laptops from the library for a couple hours if you need it for group projects or whatnot.
Personally I don't think you NEED either for school. In most classes taking notes on an electronic device doesn't work out as well as one would hope and leads to more harm than good.
From there I would go off of @Barfs advice. What is your intended major?
I have a tablet which I use for reading textbooks. I tried writing notes on it but I find its just easier to use pen and paper. Honestly I don't think you need either, as others have said you can just take a laptop out of the library.
Mannnn I been using my 4-5 year old laptop in every single class to take notes and I carry it around all the day. It's heavy as shit. Many parts failed one by one so instead of buying a new laptop like every other university student which their parent's get them a new one because they're going to uni which is retarded I just upgrade the parts in my laptop. Bought an extra $100 battery knock off from some Asian store too for the lecture halls that don't got power outlets.
It's the 21st century though I think laptop is a wayyy more efficient and organized way of taking notes and reduces the future incidences of arthritis. But if you're a dumbass and like to go on fb and twitter and all that other shit then uhhh just get more self-control and self-discipline then cuz you're 18+ years old? But laptops are definitely better then handwriting at least for me. I would do really poorly in classes if I stuck to pen and paper. I really don't like the old school way of pen and paper because it's just so inefficient and bad for your hands and slow and waste of paper etc. etc. I had a prof who didn't allow ANY technology in the class including laptops and it was just insane.
If you really can't carry an old laptop then just buy something simple under $300. You won't need amazing specs if you're just using it to take notes and occasional internet. My old laptop has a terrible heatsink and fan system so if I web surf the fan will instantly switch to a higher gear and be annoying so I'm basically forced to take notes and take notes only.
Unless you are a rich international student or some kid with a 5-figure trust fund, tablets are not cheap lol. Well relative to laptops at least. It's all about bang for buck. $500-600 tablet will get you like what 32-64gb flash memory a dual-core processor and some other useless shit plus you have to buy the extra accessories like keyboard etc. But with the same price you can get a pretty good laptop with 150GB SDD or 320GB HDD 4-6 gigs RAM and a quad-core processor. I'm hands down laptop until a couple years when tablets are cheaper.
I have never seen someone take notes worth a damn on a laptop or tablet. If you're going to write assignments on the mountain, a laptop is helpful for when the computer labs are full (put it in a locker). But for notes? Get a pad of paper and a couple coloured pens.
If you really want to go high-end, get one of those pads of paper with the micro-dots which digitizes your writing and matches it to an audio recording. There's pretty good evidence (at SFU) that students re-watch/listen to lectures, if they're available.
^You probably only think that because you don't have messy writing or get arthritis from prolonged writing either that or have a below 90wpm typing speed. That micro-dot paper thing sounds pretty cool though, how much is it?
i'd recommend buying an ipad.. it will last you at least a few years without any problems, and little if any battery degradation (that's apple for ya)
pretty soon you'll be able to download textbooks on there so it's a lot easier to carry an ipad around instead of a bunch of physical textbooks..
only problem is when you wanna type out some long form content (ie. essays, etc.) but you could always hop into one of the computer labs for that kind of stuff
no point using electronics in lecture halls, always take notes with pen and paper
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If you really want to go high-end, get one of those pads of paper with the micro-dots which digitizes your writing and matches it to an audio recording. There's pretty good evidence (at SFU) that students re-watch/listen to lectures, if they're available.