The iPads usefulness is extremely dependent upon what you do.

For example, my wife wanted an iPad for Christmas, and kept telling me it would make her job so much easier. She has her own business and does website design.

The thing is, the iPad is limited to the app store, and the app store does not have the programs she would typically use on her iMac at home.

So in her case, she would only use it for email, web & scheduling purposes, which does not justify a $600 expense.

That's my concern. I'm a surveyor (I report on the condition of houses) and for the simpler valuation tasks (say 2 page reports) my company is about to dish out tablets as a replacement for handwritten site notes. They're not intended for more detailed survey reports (say 30-50 pages), but even so I would much prefer to scribble a few notes on a printed set of site notes!

The company sees advantages from the data storage point of view, and also from the secretarial aspect as much of the stuff we fill in on the tablet will auto-appear in the report to client thereby saving typing time, but really it is the clients (national mortgage lenders) that are driving this.

Mortalis, you can setup Teamviewer for unattended access. It is in the options of the teamviewer client installed on the machine. I simply login to my teamveiwer app on my Android Tablet, or even the web login at Teamviewer's site and access all the machines I need too.

 

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Mortalis, I use Documents To Go for editing my Office files (sometimes I also do it natively from my desktop being controlled from Teamviewer as well). Like Nakal, I have Teamviewer configured for unattended access on all of my machines. You simply create an account in Teamviewer, then provide those credentials to your machines and you have access to any machine you have configured that is on and has internet access. This is a very useful feature as it allows you to remotely reboot a machine and get access to it again as soon as it is logged back on.

 

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That Teamviewer info is great. The next time I have to log into my father's computer I will do that.
Thanks for that.

Thanks also to everyone that has contributed. It appears that as long as you are fairly computer savvy you may be able to jockey stuff around to serve your purposes. My wife is not computer illiterate by a long shot but she is not computer savvy either.

 

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For work the usefulness of tablets really shines in retail and the medical industry. They're usefulness fades in other areas, but doesn't go away altogether. I store spreadsheets, powerpoints, and docs on my galaxy tab at my office for easy access. There are also apps that make note taking (with a stylus) as easy as taking notes with pen and paper. (Some apps are better than others for this...it just takes some research.)

Aside from all that, just the ability to read books, watch movies, play games, and surf the net make it worth it.

Posted from my galaxy tab.

*edit* Just to put my 2 cents in on the office app, I use QuickOffice for the easy integration with office 2010 docs, Google docs, Dropbox, box, and about 10 other cloud services.

so what app do you use to take notes?

 

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I use two note taking apps. PenSupremacy, which is just a regular note taking app with no frills, but it takes keyboard text and has a few good options. The one I use for business notes is called FreeNote. It is set up as regular lined notebook paper with a section at the bottom for stylus input. It automatically moves the notes you write onto the lined page at the top as you reach the edge and start a new line so you can just continuously write and the app takes care of the rest.

For IT, the iPad is a fantastic tool if you make use of the proper apps . The Citrix ICA and Cisco WebEx apps in particular are spectacular. The name escapes me but there is an RDP app as well that does a great job of scaling the experience to the iPad.

Here is my tale:

I bought an ipad 1 and took it back within 14 days to get my money back because it was too heavy, thick and the resolution sucked.
I bought an ipad 2 and took it back within 14 days to get my money back
because the resolution sucked.
I considered buying an Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 but the resolution sucked and the Tegra GPU in it isn't that hot.

I bought a New Ipad on release date and my 2 week return policy runs out tomorrow (friday) but I will NOT be taking it back.


Now, what have I used my ipad for in the last two weeks since I bought it:
-Weather Apps
-MyFitnessPal food tracking
-Sitting on the sofa on the main floor of my house to check out the web sites I frequent daily as it is perfect for this, especially when you end up with huge articles that need a lot of reading time as MMO-Champions had with the Pandoria information released last week.
-Some news site apps like National Post, Business Weekly, IGN and a few other ones I check out daily.
-A few quick Google Maps lookups for my parents.

Interestingly enough, I have played Zero Games on it. Why? I have a PC, 360 and PS3 for gaming and have no interest in crappy touch screen games that sucks.


THIS is what I use it for. I could do all of the above with a laptop but a laptop needs to be plugged in or the battery dies fast, needs a mouse not to suck, requires more space, etc, etc, etc. In short, it does what my ipad does but less conveniently.


Now, is the ipad for everybody? Nope. It is a MEDIA CONSUMPTION DEVICE first and for most. However it has some excellent applications that can help you with your day to day life (Weather, food trackers, recipe books, etc).

The secret is finding a good use for it and it will rock.

 

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