Do people do real work on iPads?

In my experience, the iPad is only good for work if you have minimal data entry and most of your time is meetings (i.e. executives). They are great for checking email, entering sales leads or using applications that your company has developed for the mobile device.

I use mine exactly like your wife, only on a plane or for entertainment.

Keep your laptop.

Never seen anyone do much more than check email on their iPad. I guess in certain situations you could document orders or take notes, but I cant imagine doing real work on one.

The only work I do with my ipad is email, enter small sales orders and do sales presentations. If you are editing photos you wouldn't want the ipad.

They are great for travel though.

Pretty much what I figured. I mean, I'm sure I COULD do a complex spreadsheet on an iPad, but it seems like it would take a lot longer. I'm more interested in productivity than portability.

Impossibru

I'm sure there are some conveniences and utility that an ipad could provide but not to replace a PC for work. I mean, I don't even think the ipad has a simple calculator. That right there should tell you something about it's designed purpose, which seems to be info-tainment, not workplace productivity. Tablets in general may get there someday though.

It depends on how portable you want to be.

I have a MacBook Air and an iPad. For business travel, both go along. For personal travel, only the iPad.

I have done presentations to large groups using the iPad running the presentation, and an iPhone controlling the slide transitions. I can walk around anywhere on stage and run the show myself. I can refer to the iPhone for the slide notes. I like not being a slave to a podium.

The iPad is also great when on the road for personal use, if you have a phone data plan. I can load a movie on it and connect a cable to a hotel TV and watch what I want.

The iPad is an entertainment device with some productivity functions.

The laptop is a productivity device with some entertainment functions.

I'll probably bypass the tablet fad completely and just get a 5" smartphone the next time I upgrade.

By the way, I just bought an old Lenovo x60x 12 inch laptop for $40 from a recycler that buys old corporate laptops. With Windows XP and only 1GB of ram, this would have been a slow computer, but I replaced XP with Linux Mint 14 and now it runs great. There is lots of life left in older laptops if you convert them to Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

Take my desktop, please wrote:

Do people actually use an iPad for real work -- lots of typing, programming, etc -- or just for kicks?

If you define "real work" as lots of typing, programming, etc then a tablet is the wrong tool. Tablets are particularly good at delivering content in a very portable format while being weak as an input device. If one's work involves pulling up information while on the go with limited input requirements then, yes, a tablet can be effective for real work.

I've been saying this about the IPad all along. I suppose it has a niche. And in and of itself its a cool piece of technology. But practically speaking it falls through the cracks. It doesn't replace the desktop or laptop for work. For checking e-mail, checking up on news, and a lot of other various stuff a smart phone works fine. I maintain that strictly as an e-reader the Kindle is superior with its E-Ink technology.

ryan foreman wrote:

I've been saying this about the IPad all along. I suppose it has a niche. And in and of itself its a cool piece of technology. But practically speaking it falls through the cracks. It doesn't replace the desktop or laptop for work. For checking e-mail, checking up on news, and a lot of other various stuff a smart phone works fine. I maintain that strictly as an e-reader the Kindle is superior with its E-Ink technology.

You have maintained this. This may be true for you, but clearly isn't the case for the overall market. Tablet sales are expected to surpass PC sales this year.

Yes, they'll surpass PC's because most don't use them for work.

Citizen Runner wrote:

Take my desktop, please wrote:

Do people actually use an iPad for real work -- lots of typing, programming, etc -- or just for kicks?

If you define "real work" as lots of typing, programming, etc then a tablet is the wrong tool. Tablets are particularly good at delivering content in a very portable format while being weak as an input device. If one's work involves pulling up information while on the go with limited input requirements then, yes, a tablet can be effective for real work.

^This^ +1

Foe editing photos, forget about it.

amcx wrote:

Yes, they'll surpass PC's because most don't use them for work.

I'm not claiming one way or another about being used for work, just that their use is huge and they're hugely popular. This would hardly make it a "niche" as ryan foreman has been claiming for years.

I know of one student who puts his textbooks on a tablet. It seems to work well for him.

I was just in a meeting with 7 attorneys. There were 3 laptops and two tablets in use. The junior associates were taking notes on the laptops. The more senior attorneys used the tablets to look at documents.

I'm a litigator and I use my ipad for work every day. I have all of the important documents for cases I'm working on saved on it. It's very quick to pull them up and search when I'm in a meeting. It's also more comfortable when I need to read for hours on end to do it on my couch rather than at my desk with a computer. All of my annotations are saved as well.

Even when I'm working on appeals, which are far less document intensive, I might still need to have many thousands of pages of material at my disposal. While hard copy binders stay in my office (or get shipped to court when it's time to argue), the ipad goes with me everywhere.

It also gets used in conjunction with the laptop. If I'm writing a brief, and I'm outside of the office where I have multiple monitors, I keep the document on my laptop screen, and refer to the ipad for the documents I'm working from.

It's also pretty good for doing caselaw research.

I've been to a few restaurants where waiters enter orders on tablets. I assume the orders get sent directly to the kitchen. I've also been stopped on the street by people doing surveys who use a template on a tablet to enter responses. That seems about the limitation of data input on a tablet - poking your finger at one of a very few choices. Otherwise they're best for data consumption - viewing video, emails, web pages, etc.

Yep....seems like if you're creating something, you need a real computer. If you're just using it as a viewer (for yourself or others), an iPad is ok.

Well of course its not an either/or. In my own household smart phones and e-readers have outsold PCs. That is because I have a relatively old PC that works fine while smart phones and my Kindle are new products that have come out and are at a high growth stage.

The point is, My PC, Kindle, and I-Phone together do just about everything I want. Why the hell would I want an I-Pad? I just happen to have space for a PC so that works for me and up to now I haven't had reason for a mobile computer. I'll probably get a laptop in the near future.

I'm not anti-tablet. I'm honestly trying to find a reason to buy one. I just can't find a utilitarian purpose that justifies the price. I can see it being good for kids. Maybe for textbooks it works well. There are other various niches's it might fill.

But the I-Pad doesn't replace a PC/Laptop for most working people. It doesn't replace a smart phone. If its not a better alternative to those things. If you have to have those things anyway, it begs the question what is the marginal value the I-Pad is giving you?