I don’t edit video, not much any more. I’d love to dump at least 10-15 pounds of gack from the backpack. ( Current weight: 34 pounds ).
I need Microsoft Office. All of it. Can I run Keynote off of an iPad? I need that. A pal showed me some $ 20.00 app that allows me to run Office off of an iPad.
Photos and video are the bulk of the problem. Not unusual. Where do I park roughly 300 Gig of that stuff so I can quickly and EFFICIENTLY access it? Yeah, I use a MiFi from Verizon if I’m not near another WiFi source, so access is never an issue.
Can I swap to an iPad? Have you done it, what are the pitfalls and upsides?
Cannot afford it. The MacBook belongs to current employer. The iPad ( Gen2 ) is sitting on the shelf in front of me, free. With a wireless keyboard already.
Tablets are generally not great for long duration office tasks, especially speadsheet work. There are a lot of reviews out there in which journalists or such have carried around iPads to try and use them to replace their travel notebooks. Almost all these reviews tend to say “for a lot of stuff, it’s great, but even with the attached keyboard it can get problematic to do long duration typing and document editing on the iPad.” That’s my paraphrasing.
As for Microsoft Office, I believe Microsoft has said they plan to release an iPad version at some point. Right now I think the only way to utilize office on an iPad is through apps that let you basically use a “virtual machine” type connection that connects your iPad to a server or machine somewhere that runs an instance of Microsoft Office. I’ve heard Microsoft has even sued some of these services due to licensing violations, and you’ll have to keep in mind it’s similar to a remote desktop type connection so there will be some latency and etc you wouldn’t be used to with a regular computer running the application locally.
Tablets excel at consumption of media, can do some light editing, and delivery of various cool apps and games. They are weakest at content creation and heavy content editing, especially with any type of content that requires very precise interaction (spreadsheets, certain types of image editing etc.) Certain high intensity tasks (meaning high in resource usage) would also be difficult to do on any tablet.
If your employer allows it, gotomypc could make this technically possible, but you’d still have the problem of attempting to do actual work on an iPad. There’s also a subscription fee involved.
I’ve had to connect to iTunes about twice in the last 5 months with my iPad. What are you connecting for?
Cartooniverse: Have you looked at OnLive yet? It’s a cloud-based Microsoft Office environment. It’s also free. There are also a number of free VPN clients you can use, if there’s a home/office computer for you to connect to.
I have to wonder how many people responding have actually used an iPad for office productivity tasks. I’ve carried and used one for about a year now, and if my organization allowed me to connect a personal device to the Outlook and internal file servers and/or use cloud-type data access instead of hobbled webmail I could do nearly everything I need to do while traveling, and about 80% of what I do in office without lugging around an 8 lbm laptop. I’ve also carried the iPad on an extended (~1 mo) vacation on remote islands with minimal Internet access without hooking up to iTunes, and have had not problem journalling, downloading JPEG images and MPEG video from an SD card, editing images, mapping, and other basic productivity-type tasks. The Microsoft Office-compatible productivity applications as not as fully featured or robust as their PC or MacBook counterparts, but that is really a maturity issue rather than a hardware limitation, and they’re fully usable for basic functionality such as writing memos. I actually find reading and editing PDFs and images generally easier on the iPad due to the direct interface and ability to switch orientation on the fly.
I don’t understand the claim that “the biggest problem is it can’t multitask quickly”; while it is true that you cannot have multiple frames open simultaneously, a quick double click of the home button brings up a bar at the bottom of the screen with all open apps, so two or three gestures can get you from one app to another, which is easier than sorting through windows on top of windows, and at least for me, tends to make me more focused on what I’m doing.
That being said, the iPad is not a replacement or a laptop or workstation doing heavy-duty computing or graphic manipulation, and if I were writing a long report I’d prefer to use a laptop . There are a couple of Python compilers (Python for iOS and PythonMath), but their functionality is limited; I assume the same for other languages. There are a number of calculator and computer algebra systems, but for a complex problem requiring a lot of memory or data input the iPad will be slow to the point of non-functionality. The CAD applications available for the iPad are limited to say the least. And if I were writing a long report or paper I’d prefer a workstation or laptop with an external monitor and full-sized keyboard. But for what I do on the road, it would be almost entirely sufficient it I had suitable access, and it takes up far less space and operates for much longer than my laptop, which is especially critical when I’m in a “standing room only” meeting or sitting in a side chair without a table.
I’ve used office software on a tablet and it just doesn’t work for me. If most of your traveling work is short memos and minor edits then I can see it meeting your needs. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ’s All Things Digital column took one on a “working vacation” to Paris and said it totally replaced a laptop to him. He then had a CFO of a large corporation ask him about whether or not she could do the same, and after talking to her for about five minutes he said most of what she is wanting to do would not be nearly as comfortable to do on a laptop as his work was.
For me, I’m the managing partner of a real estate LP and I do basically two things while traveling: meet and greets (which are totally non-digital) and extensive document and spreadsheet work. I don’t type or send out short memos, and emails on the road I typically bound out in 2-3 minutes on my smartphone.
For extensive document and spreadsheet work I can’t get comfortable with a tablet physically, and that is 90% of my traveling computer work. I also have to do stuff like compare two contracts side by side line by line sometimes, and that isn’t too easy on a tablet. (I just use BeyondCompare on a desktop PC for this.)
For things like extensive spreadsheet work I also don’t believe tablets can bridge that gap just with increases in software. With a spreadsheet I feel there are inherent form factor and interface limitations to 10" touchscreens versus a mouse and pointer.
Reading and considering all. Here’s what I am finding poking around.
The Microsoft Office work-arounds seem fine for my level of need. If I do this switch, it is because I am primarily producing 1-3 page documents or fine-tuning documents I have already. Not publishing a book or processing 110 column spreadsheets.
The single dealbreaker as far as I could tell was ( note past tense ) that I could not load a huge Keynote presentation onto the iPad and run it. Have found what seems to be good fixes.
Bluetooth keyboard and mouse make my way of working workable on an iPad. I detest typing onto the screen.
Storage of large files and lack of access. I don’t care about the Cloud. I want a fair bit of media on hand. Have watched a few You Tubules videos proving that a USB flash stick and non-powered and powered usb hard drive cannot be “launched” by an iPad.
3.I can make use of the most clever and fairly inexpensive Seagate Go Flex WiFi generator/ hard drive. Now I can store a terrabyte of media 6" from the iPad and link quickly and strongly. Stream video, find images, etc.
I am taking my iPad to Tekserve in NYC and asking them to set this system up for me. I will bring my MacBook Pro so I have the Keynote presentation on hand. I’ll explain my list of needs. IF I can use the WiFi generator within the Go Flex to access large media files, I’m set.
For $ 24.99 I can get the iPad to HDMI dongle with power charge jack next to HDMI jack. So, I access the media files and mirror the iPad onto an external projector or monitor using the HDMI cable.
For that cost ( 119 for Go Flex, 25 for cable ) it appears the single largest negative is gone. I get to ditch…15 pounds?.. of gack on my back and move to a lightweight elegant solution.
What do I not understand? Why will this not work as I understand it?
Oh. Aside from what seems to be a good fix, I have a larger issue.
It appears that I still need to own a laptop. Preferably a Mac. I’d rather not- and holy crap do I adore this MacBook. But it’s not mine, if I lose it it’s because I am working on an iPad exclusively.
If I can access this terrabyte of data sitting at my elbow, and import images using the readable SD to iPad dongle…well, why do I need a laptop at home?
Try copying posts from 3 different threads into one Word document. Better yet, try getting data from a website, a pdf, and text from a picture. Sending an email with attachment? Whoops, you can’t attach things to emails. You can only attach emails to things. Of course, all this depends on what you use your iPad for. If you don’t do these, it won’t affect you.
Do iPads support mice? Ever since the latest OS update with iCloud, they’ve been able to function quite well without a computer, even activation can be done without iTunes.