The reality is it's easiest to use iTunes to access these devices. Battery life is extremely good on iPads, you should have no issue there. Short of Jail Breaking and other dubious activities iTunes on a Win/Mac is your best answer. I've tried everything I could find for over a year. I hate it, but it's the reality. My advice: move on :-) IOS has many benefits, enjoy them! Easy access to it's internals, however, is not one of them. IMHO it would be easier to convince your school to allow a choice between brands of tablets than to crack IOS, without Jail-Breaking... i.e. both are probably not worth wasting much time on. Check out "Remote Files Browser" app - it's pretty neat, and learn iTunes, you will hate it, but it's worth it. mike. http://mikelindner.wordpress.com