Monday, October 4, 2010

Can an iPad replace a laptop on a business trip?

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal stole my idea!

Well, not really.  But he did recently write a nice column about his experience taking an iPad on a "working vacation" rather than a laptop.  I did the same thing for last week's trip to DC.

Like Mr Mossberg I wanted something that would let me keep in touch with the office, and that would help me pass some time at the airport and on the airplane.  I did not need Office-style applications since I was not intending to work with spreadsheets or deliver a presentation.

And like Mr Mossberg I too found that having the iPad alone was just fine for everything I wanted to do.  Safari gave me access to Gmail, the Kindle app gave me access to books to read, and a few other apps (e.g., Maps) filled in the rest of my needs.  Had I needed to deliver a PowerPoint deck, however, I would have brought a way-way-too-slow HP Mini netbook instead.

And, also like Mr Mossberg, I too spoke with several folks in the airport - especially the TSA checkpoints - about the iPad, giving it pretty rave reviews.

1 comment:

  1. It's possible, using the $10 Keynote application, to do presentations from an iPad. It does help, though, if you also have Keynote on a Mac to actually build the presentation, although you can build the whole thing on the iPad. You just need the iPad VGA adaptor...

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