Replacing your PC with an iPad for school makes sense for a lot of reasons, and it will save you money on textbooks over the longrun.

Even though PC manufacturers like Dell refuse to believe the Post-PC Revolution is already here, and that people want tablets more than desktops, evidence is already showing that students and schools are buying iPads instead of PCs.

Needham & Company released a note to investors today stating that PC education shipments fell 13.9%, or 265,000 units compared to the June quarter in 2011. Contrasting that data with Apple’s announcement that they’ve sold nearly a million iPads in the K-12 market in June, it seems pretty clear that iPad is cannibalizing PC sales in the U.S. education market.

“Clearly, a significant portion of iPad sales represented an expansion of the market. But in view of the fact that Mac sales held steady at around 520,000 units but overall PC sales declined by 265,000 units from 1.90 million to 1.64 million units, we believe the inescapable conclusion is that the iPad is beginning to cannibalize a material portion of PC sales in this market.”

Writing for Needham & Company, Charlie Wolf explained that they view the education market as “the canary in the coal mine,” that will predict when the iPad will have an impact on the U.S. market at large.

Source: AppleInsider