The Teckki Says

In this post, I want to talk about some accessories you should have with your iPad - specifically a case, a keyboard and a docking station, but not necessarily in that order. The docking station will determine what type of case you will get, so I will discuss it first.

I purchased Apple's docking station, which at $30 seems excessive for a highly polished slab of plastic. In fact, all Apple's accessories seem to be at that price point, regardless of the function or type of materials used. Your first thought is that you are already paying a premium (along with a wait) for the iPad - Isn't Apple price-gouging on their accessories?

Moments after setting up the iPad onto the dock, my answer to the price-gouging question was answered - ooh, its soooo worth it! Apple knows how to engineer its products! It's more than a plastic slab. It holds the iPad at such an angle so that you can sit for hours and experience minimal neck, back and arm pain. The dock has two connections, one for power, and another for audio output. The dock is a perfect companion, albeit in the portrait orientation, for viewing, surfing, typing and other types of light office activity.

This brings me to the next device - a keyboard. There are many out there, but the one I am using is the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. This is the same model that comes standard with their desktops, and again, at a premium price. Again, worth it!!! My minor complaint is that is has no numeric keypad (this is left to a third party vendor). Hookup is as easy as pairing it's Bluetooth signal to your iPad. The keyboard is solid, with raised keys and brushed aluminum backboard. It is far superior to the iPad's keyboard on the screen, even in landscape. If you are going to do a lot of typing, such as I am doing in preparing this post for the blog, an external keyboard is a necessity. At $70, both the dock and keyboard will be set back about a hundred dollars, but your hands, arms, back and neck will thank you for the way you feel after having typed a long document.

Since the dock fits snugly into the iPad, getting it will dictate your choice of cases. I purchased a case that you put your iPad in, not a slip-cover type. You will have to remove the case in order to use the dock, which ruled out the slip-cover cases. I also got a case that allows me to slip in my iPod Touch and occasionally, my iPhone in a side pouch, along with other items like paper and business cards.

This setup, while mimicking a PC or Mac, does not replace it. Microsoft Word and other industrial strength word processors depend on keyboard shortcuts, which many can be duplicated on an iPad. However, you don't realize how dependent word processing is with a mouse, and the experience doesn’t always correlate to finger swipes. Notwithstanding, many word processing software functionality is overkill, and for most routine tasks, like web surfing and answering email, the iPad, and in many cases an iPhone, will do just fine. I wouldn’t recommend ditching the laptop, but reserve it for things that really require it, like editing a spreadsheet with all of those macros.

One of the things I am experiencing is that I always seem to be spending more money on one more thing, and by now, I could have purchased a laptop and then some. However, new computing experiences do matter, and sooner or later, we'll all be going this route as the post PC era has begun. Until then, get one and try it yourself. See you soon with the next post!

Last time, I wrote about Five Things to Keep in Mind When Buying a Tablet. My tablet of choice is Apple’s iPad 2. There is more to a tablet than web browsing and watching videos, but if the choice is between a computer and a tablet for simple tasks, the tablet wins. Here are five ways you can be more productive with a tablet.

(1). Power starts. Tablets power up and wake faster from sleep mode. For those who turns off their laptops when the work is complete, or tries to awake ones from sleep mode, you could catch a bus to Timbuktu and back waiting for laptops to come back up. Unless you have hundreds of apps on your tablet, something that I advise against having, your tablet will power up quickly, and allow you to start being productive much sooner.

(2). Web browsing. Contrary to many beliefs, web browsing is a valid business activity at many firms. We have to maintain websites, blogs, social media sites and manage email. Most of it starts within a web browser, and getting to it quicker means getting it done faster. For those who criticize iPads for not displaying Flash, most major sites have adjusted to this - nothing like the sales of over 25 million iPads, with a million or more being sold each month, to get a company to think about which side of the fight they are going to be on - their sites will support both Flash and non-Flash devices. This would be true even without the iPad, as other mobile devices, such as smartphones, don’t handle Flash-intensive sites well, forcing the development of alternate sites.

(3). Apps. Tablet screens scream to be touched, and apps needing touches are not all games! Drawings apps, learning apps, presentation apps, in other words, apps with REAL business uses, yearn for the experiences of touching, swiping and moving. This has revolutionized the computing experience is such a way that going back to some of these programs on a computer is not viable. There are limits: Garage Band is great on the iPad, and is fantastic for learning and sketching out ideas, but serious music making belongs on a PC or Mac, and many touch experiences belong on musical instruments that produce real sound.

(4). Saving Trees. I have to attend meetings where pages of supporting documentation can run into the dozens. Given the choice between a 19 oz tablet versus printing a hundred pages for a one-time use, this is a no-brainer. The tradeoff is that paper doesn't need batteries, but if the meeting is that critical and dependent on the information, I'll can carry both.

(5). Show Time. I have done several sales and/or status meetings with my iPad. Clients love the presentation, and the iPad. You can do multiple things quickly, such as present photos, surf the web for information, shoot out emails, and of course, do a slideshow presentation, all with one device, and interactively. You can do that with a PC too, but "pinch, swipe and drag" from hand motions brings in energy that a mouse can't match.

There are obviously more things you can do with a tablet to be productive, and I can't list them all here. But you can! Let me know if you have a tablet, and share some of the interesting things you are doing with it to be more productive. See you in the next post!