The Teckki Says

My iPad is approximately six months old, and it has changed the way I approach computing. I have to admit that I now have a collection of devices that I depend on for certain things, in the same way one has a number of appliances or tools.

One of the nicest things about my iPad is fast boot up times. My computers are workhorses, and my PC's can take up to 10 minutes to fully boot. Several minutes are also wasted waking my PC's from sleep mode. That’s too long just to read email or surf the web. Using the iPad for this frees up significant time for me, and lets me get to other things faster.

When I am on the road, taking the iPad instead of a laptop is a huge plus. Again, boot up times are shorter, and most of the time, I’m only showing something to someone, not doing project work. For displaying an online mockup, the iPad is perfect, unless it is developed in Flash. Showing pictures? The ooh’s and ah’s from clients are like music. On a sales call? My iPad has in many cases kept me in front of a prospect longer than I would have been otherwise.

As an eReader, my experiences have been mixed. When I am working on projects, it can be perfect as a second screen for reading reference books. However, as a pure eReader, it is heavy, making Kindles and Nooks better suited for this. However, I won’t consider anything smaller for a video screen, making the iPad ideal for viewing movies.

The iPad is a great device for generating ideas and notes. I usually start blog articles on the iPad, but I would recommend that you purchase the Bluetooth keyboard serious typing. For idea generation, a variety of tools, such as drawing and painting, outlining and screenshots give me plenty of ways to record thoughts. Only pencil and paper is faster, but with and iPad, I can use many more colors.

Although I have older kids, this is a great device to keep them occupied when they are waiting around. On the road, I’ll fire up the hotspot on the phone, and hope they don’t use up my data allotment on YouTube. But they get a kick out of it.

After having my iPad and becoming familiar with it, I am ready to take some next steps. I have been using it to upload pictures from my camera. The major issue I have is that there is no filing system, so I can’t categorize and easily offload pictures to another device. I am also using it for a presentation, having worked out the translation kinks between PowerPoint and Keynote. Soon, I will purchase a tablet stylus to write and draw faster on it. I’ll keep you informed on these ventures in future posts.