Will Kelly

My iPad has become a constant daily companion and I am reading a lot about how some think the iPad can replace a laptop PC. Similar thoughts are crossing my mind as of late but I still have lingering doubts since I work as a technical writer and have very particular hardware requirements. It’s a capable device and my use cases for it have only grown in the nearly year I have owned mine.

Though the more I bring my iPad into my workflow, it only augments my laptop or desktop PC though there are some activities where I reach for my iPad first.

Document and Blog Authoring

While I did pick up a keyboard for my iPad, I’ve yet to author a new document or even a blog post using my iPad. For serious writing, I go to my MacBook Pro or Windows 7 desktop. I do use iWork for the iPad and DocsToGo but I still like a full-fledged Office suite or desktop publishing application when I have to create a document.

For my purposes, the iPad works best as a reviewing and editing tool and to that is how I use it. To that end, I use GoodReader or iAnnotate PDF to review PDFs and iWork or DocsToGo to review simple word documents (like article drafts). So far, I’ve yet to find a solution to review complex Word documents like technical documentation that relies on a lot of styles that makes me feel comfortable.

My tinkering with WordPress for iPad has left me unimpressed and a bit disappointed because of the application’s instability and feature set especially since I was hoping to use it for editing blog posts on the go.

Calendar and Task Management

While I use Outlook to manage my email and calendaring, my primary interface to my calendar has always been my mobile device  at the time. Now that I have my iPad and iPhone syncing with Google Apps on the backend of willkelly.com, I am well on my way to calendar nirvana. My iPad sits on my desk at work and at home where I reach for it before my Outlook calendar. The calendar included in iOS has been meeting all of my needs thus far and I don’t expect to be exploring any third party calendars for the iPad.

Using a mobile device to manage my tasks predates my iPad and iPhone. Since I am dyslexic, I went to electronic task lists years ago so I could take advantage of the audible reminders. My current task management tool of choice is Omnifocus for iPad with some serious attention paid to Things for iPad.

Diagram Creation

As a technical writer, if I am not writing, I am creating diagrams. While much of my work requires a more robust diagramming application like Visio to get the job done, I do like what OmniGraffle for iPad has to offer. Creating diagrams using a touch screen feels more natural and free than with a keyboard and mouse.

I am also a big user of mind maps and began using MindNode until I got turned onto iThoughtsHD. Moving to iThoughtsHD gives me a more fully featured mind mapping tool just like I have on my PC. Having a mind mapping app on my iPad also plays better to how I now capture ideas.

Note Taking

I’ve never been much of an electronic note taker but the iPad is slowly changing that with applications like Penultimate (I previously wrote about it) and of course Evernote. Weaning myself from paper note taking is taking longer than I like especially since I finally have the tools to make this long overdue change as to how I take meeting and interview notes.

Since becoming a serious Evernote user capturing documents and web pages has become a growing part of my note taking making the iPad a wonderful device for retrieving such information whether I am on a client site or working out of my home office.

File Management

My iPad only has 32 GB onboard memory, which isn’t much of an issue for me personally since I use DropBox for managing my primary project files. With more iPad applications like iThoughtsHD, DocsToGo using DropBox as an option for file storage I find myself not really storing a lot of data locally.

Web Browsing

I am the type that has a laptop on my living room coffee table 24×7 so I am never too far from a machine that can get me online to browse the web. However, I do enjoy web browsing on my iPad. There is yet to be a plug in/extension friendly browser for the iPad so I am getting a vanilla (and Flash-free) browsing experience.

Social Media

Twitter for iPad ranks as one of my favorite applications so I use it frequently. The increased screen real estate of the iPad makes it  What I would like to see is an iPad native version of the Seesmic Twitter client since I get more of my news from Twitter these days and like to capture particular tweets into Evernote.

I am still not a big Facebook guy so accessing it from my iPad isn’t much of an issue but I have downloaded MyPad but have yet to take it out for a serious spin yet. No iPad native LinkedIn client

The iPad vs. my Laptop

While the iPad is gaining some definite inroads into my daily productivity, it remains a supplementary tool to my laptop or desktop PC. For the reasons I outline in this post, I don’t see my 1^st gen iPad supplanting my laptop. This is not to say that the iPad may not reach a point in a future generation because the I can see the gap already beginning to close in my common daily tasks.

Are your replacing your laptop with an iPad?