I kid you not...

...Someone bought me an iPad

Ever since Steve Jobs announce the iPad, I've wanted one. When I say wanted one, I mean WANTED ONE. The thing is, I have absolutely no idea why I wanted one other than it looked like it was cool, which might be enough for some people, but since I consider myself at least partly rational this was somewhat confusing.

I wasn't sure it could be used for my business. I wasn't sure it could be used to generate business for my consulting activities, and , in case my wife is reading this, I'm 100% certain that nubile young ladies on the train have no interest at all in anything that a balding 36 year old bloke is holding.

I already have an iPhone, which is like an iPad, except that it can also make calls, fits conveniently into your pocket and is somewhat cheaper. So why do I want this device so desparately ?

I had no idea, until I got one

A friend of mine who I've know for a couple of years pre-ordered them. He was most excited - imagine a small puppy bouncing up and down and yapping. "I've pre-ordered an iPad. It's going to be great. Oh, and I've ordered one for you too..."

It's not often that I receive $1000 gifts. In fact, the last time I did receive a $1000 gift was probably when I bought myself a new car because it was "on sale". I was intrigued. Why did he do this ?

By comparison, to celebrate the enormous milestone of my 30th birthday, my wife allowed me to cook Spaghetti Bolognese. There is some sort of gift-disparity here, and one that I hope will be addressed at Christmas. The bar has been set pretty high, although I expect my wife stopped reading at bolognese, which means now is a great time to point out chicks dig the ipad. To be fair - everyone that's looked at it likes it. It really is the device of the moment.

Anyhow, back on topic, the answer he gave was simple - "because you will do Awesome stuff with it, and as a sales partner for your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) I know you will make me money."
To be fair to John, so far I have conducted the following awesome iPad activities:

• Checked my email
• surfed some websites
• installed a game which is rubbish because the iPad has a touchscreen

I must admit, my initial reactions were disappointing, but since then I've had the pleasure to take the iPad onto a couple of sites.

How useful is it?


One company I took it to didn't believe that I'd received it as a gift, and were under the misaprehension that I'd brought it in for them.  The others pounced on it and started to look at how it could be used.

The lawyer was the first responder.  We're currently building him a legal management system, based on Total Enterprise CRM.  It will manage all of his caseload, and he can imagine himself in court with complete remote access to all his documents through the iPad.  

In fact, it is a GREAT device for data viewing, through a web browser you get a full 1024x768 screen display so you can see a lot of data very easily.  The onscreen keyboard is cumbersome as you might expect - I wouldn't want to use it as a primary data entry device, but again, I don't really think that's what it's for. If you need to have your customer data with you on the go, it rocks.

The financial services guy wants to have access to all his performance dashboards on a super-portable device, and is even considering using it as a primary device.  In a Terminal Services based environment, he can have his desktop on the screen on the low-end computer in front of him, and then when he goes into a meeting, take whatever is on his screen using a terminal services app for the iPad.   This implicitly will give him word, excel and all of the office docs , plus email for the meeting he gets bored. His business applications and dashboards are web-based mainly, so with Wifi in the office he's in business.


What's missing?

The ability to link the iPad to an external device, such as a projector would be very nice.  It would be a good and very portable way to do presentations.   I popped out to a client this morning to do a bit of training - for once I didn't bother with the laptop and just took the pad, so I could respond to mails and check up on what people were saying about our sale of Online Armor to Emsisoft.   It was enough, and it got the expected oohhs and ahhhs when I fished it out of my bag.

A built in camera would be nice, not quite sure why wasn't put on there.  Other than that, I think it's pretty neat and fills a useful niche.

How will I use it ?

I'll likely lug it around as a separate device, and mainly for quickly demonstrating things and managing email on the go. I'm somewhat obsessive about checking my email, which hopefully will ease a little now Online Armor is sold.

If I figure out a good way to store files on it, it could also replace my USB key and on many sites where I go to install, I could carry around a lot of "stuff" on it.  Maybe I just need to rename my files "CRM Install.mp3".

This screenshot shows our Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) running on the iPad. The photo is a bit dodgy (taken with a phone) but Safari renders it beautifully, even will all the javascripty-ajaxy stuff it is still fast - which means that I can have a fully-fledged CRM with me at all times.  If I see you on the train and ask me what I do, I'm quite likely to give you an impromtu demo - but only when we've done more iPad specific optimisations.