I sure hope to god I’m asking for help at the right place.
I use a lot of MS Office files (2010 Office), mostly excel spreadsheets, for my second job, at home.
Lately my main job has got me running all over the state so I’m thinking about buying a tablet to keep on tabs about what’s going on at home.
Would be nice to have a tablet just to view things when I’m at home too.
This second job at home is just a small “hobby” operation.
I’ve got two employees working there about 6 hours a day.
They use/edit the same office files I’m talking about.
What tablet should I buy, and most importantly, which software (on the PCs/tablet) would I need to be able to view/edit the files at the LAN at home?
I’ve got a static IP on my home network, if that helps.
What solution can one seek to solve this?
If it’s something too involved of a process, I’m willing to pay a little for this support.
I do everything you are talking about on my Motorola Xoom. There are many apps available that allow you to view (and even edit) MS files. I use Quick Office to view most files; there are several others available.
I prefer the Xoom over the iPad due to it’s ability to utilize a removable SD min Flash card, view flash sites on the web and it is upgradable to 4G starting next month. The iPad 2 cannot do these things. YMMV.
Some important clarification, I guess. When I talk about “editing”, I’m talking about mostly “ticking boxes” and whatnot. Not heavy editing.
What I want to do is to be able to view the spreadsheets, be able to do some minor editing and not disturbing the use of the files for those working there at my work network.
I don’t want to have to download/transfer it to the Tablet, use the file, and after I’m done using it having to upload/transfer it back to the home network PC so other people can use it again. I want to simply “open” it. Like you can do on PC LAN situation…
Is that how you do it with your Xoom? If not, Is that possible to arrange?
I’m a lot more interested on android than iOs for some reason, so that’s good to hear also.
My recommendation - regardless of the tablet you use - is some sort of remote login solution like Remote Desktop, LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, etc. That way, you’ve got the same software and files right at your fingertips wherever you go. This is our current solution with an iPad and it works very well. Even a 3G network speed is sufficient to maintain the connection and you can obviously borrow faster WiFi from coffee shops and the like.
I use the a remote login client on my xoom to access my work pc. My work pc has the matching software as my tablet that allows me to log into it remotely and basically l do everything I could when sitting in front of it. No file transferring necessary. Pretty cool. I use a app called WyseCloud to do this. Cost about $15 but well worth it.
All cloud computing is about is remotely logging onto other pc’s or servers to run software. Basically you have one clould in your sky when all you do is log onto your own pc, but you could also access your entire home network if you needed to.
