I've more or less decided to buy an Apple iPad. On the one hand, I'm convinced it will be an excellent device for the consumption of media. The purported 140 hours of music playback time would be wonderful for the long haul flights I find myself on so often. And I love the idea of having an enormous multitouch web browsing experience. On the other, the iPad has a lot of productivity potential. I'm already in love with the idea of bringing an iPad to meetings for Keynote presentations rather than my comparatively bulky laptop. The folks at Omni Group also set my heart racing when they announced that they intend to port all of their major productivity applications to the iPad. OmniGraffle on the iPad will be sublime, I'm sure.

Bearing that in mind, I've now begun to ask myself whether I should buy one of the standard WiFi-only models or spring for an iPad with a cellular radio. Apple managed to strike a great deal with AT&T — no contracts, low prices — and the device is unlocked.

But as I began to consider the matter more closely, I realized I may need to buy the 3G-equipped model more out of necessity than an occasional desire for ubiquitous Internet access on a third portable device (see iPhone, Kindle).

As I initially considered it, I figured a 3G iPad might be worth buying just in case I ever wanted a month or two of service. I like the idea of popping in an Orange SIM card in Paris and killing time on the train to Lyon or Cannes on a trip to France. But then it occurred to me that the inane Bates network security scheme would prevent me from doing such routine tasks as checking my email on the iPad via WiFi, as is the case with my iPhone and the Bates network. As it stands now, I can only check my email on the iPhone thanks to the spotty coverage provided by the fine folks at AT&T.

Not that our charming IT people make it easy for me to connect to the Bates WiFi network on my phone in the first place. Regardless of the number of times I tell my phone to remember and automatically connect to the auxiliary BatesGuest SSID, it can't seem to pull it off. And when I manage to connect to the network, I'm forced to authenticate in the browser with my username and hard-to-type 15 character mixed-case alpha-numeric-symbolic password every single time. Not once every 24 hours, or even once every hour. If I were to authenticate right now, visit a website and put my phone to sleep, I would have to re-authenticate in five minutes if I decided to open Tweetie.

In case the previous two paragraphs didn't make it clear, I feel strongly that these policies are ridiculous and utterly absurd.

I already have a more or less unfettered Internet connection from the college on my laptop. If I wanted to break into a secure database or launch a cyberattack on the Defense Department, preventing my benign mobile phone from joining the WiFi network won't provide any defense at all.

Of course, the people in IT also like to argue that allowing just any device onto the network creates the possibility that I or someone else will spread some horrible virus to the rest of the campus. But I fail to see how locking devices out of the network does anything to stop this. First of all, as I already mentioned, my laptop, which poses a far greater risk in that regard, is already on the network. Banning my iPhone or iPad does zilch. More importantly, though, most viruses and malware are spread through the Internet! So if I were just to send people on campus a virus-laden email from a cellular modem, just as many computers would be infected. Beyond that, the tightly-controlled environments like iPhone OS are, to my knowledge, not even capable of launching some kind of sophisticated attack.

What rationale do these people have for keeping my iPhone off the proper WiFi network? I say none whatsoever.

I'm sick of being treated like a criminal. Give my iPhone unfettered Internet access!