For the final phase of testing I will review the practicality of the iPad as a tool for presenting product and company information. This has potential for dual purposes: Presenting information to customers as a sales tool, and presenting information to employees (sales reps and others) as a training tool.

The basic ways to present product information are by showing documents or media files, such as:

• PDF files
• PPT presentations
• JPG pictures (or other image file types)
• Videos

The iPad can handle showing any of these types of files, presuming that you have a way to get the files onto the iPad. As discussed in Part 3 of this series, one fairly easy way to do this is with a Box.net account. Using that system, it is possible to upload the files to the Box cloud from another computer, and then access them from the iPad. You can organize your Box files using folders so that your various content will be easy to find and access.

iPad Box Folders

You can view any of these types of files directly in the Box app. Here is how they work out:

• PDF files (brochures, flyers, etc). A. These can be opened directly in Box and they display just as they should. Brochures and flyers look great on the iPad display.

iPad Box PDF View

• PPT Presentations. B-. The PowerPoints don’t work particularly well when viewed from the Box app. They can only be viewed in portrait orientation, and you go through them by scrolling with your finger. Using the Office2HD app for viewing the PPT files works out much better. From that app you can access your PPT files, and once you open one you can view it full screen in landscape mode via the play function. A tap on the screen advances the slide, or you can swipe left or right to go back and forward. If the PPT files are large in size, (such as 5 MB) it takes a while to get one opened, 30 seconds or more. During my testing this was not a stable situation, sometimes Office2HD would lock up when loading a PPT, requiring a restart. It probably is a good idea to work with smaller PPT files. Also, the formatting does not always carry over cleanly. Most of the slides look OK, but some have weird formatting problems that are not present in when viewed on a PC (see example below). If there is any interactive programmed in the PPT, such as buttons that jump to certain slides, these do not function (more on this later). All in all, showing PPT files is workable, but it could use a lot of improvement.

Box PPT View in Portrait. Pretty much worthless.

Box PPT View in Landscape. Pretty much more useless.

Office2HD PPT View. Acceptable, but has odd formatting.

• Videos.  A. Selecting a video, getting it going, and then watching it full screen in landscape mode all work well directly from the Box app.

Box Video Player. It is good.

Box video playing fullscreen. It is good.

• Pictures.  D.. Viewing pictures is a mess from within Box. They display strangely, always in the upper corner, you cannot center them. Some pictures flow past the edge of the display and there is no easy way to view them full screen. Overall it is pretty much a mess. So, we will have to try another system.

If showing a lot of product pictures is a goal (which is something we do), then Box.net is not a good solution. A better tool would be the Photos app that is built into the iPad. It turns out this is a nice tool for viewing pictures, but once again we will need to sort out how to get those pictures onto the iPad.  For now, the easiest way I have been able to do it is by syncing with iTunes. This solution works OK, but is not too desirable because it adds so many steps to the whole process. But at least once it is done you have a decent solution for viewing pictures. We are already stuck with having to connect the iPad to a computer running iTunes anyway, although with the latest OS5 update in theory it could be possible to use an iPad with no computer.

In order to get any significant number of pictures into the iPad in a way that they can be reasonably accessed, they need to be organized into a folder on the source computer. To help organize the pictures, they can be stored in subfolders. The subfolders will sync to the iPad as Albums which will organize the pictures into groups. Once the pictures folder is organized on the source computer, the iPad is connected, iTunes is launched, and then it is a fairly simple matter to sync you designated folder.

Once you have synced the photos to the iPad, you can use the Photos app to view them, which works much nicer than the Box app. You can look at Albums to keep things organized, and view the pictures neatly in the viewer. You can also view a slideshow of an album if desired. So for viewing photos this way, we move up to an A.

Picture albums within the iPad Photos app.

Pictures to choose from within an album.

Full view of a picture from the Photos app.

Since we now are connecting the iPad to a computer and syncing with iTunes, we might as well load videos that way as well. If you do this, you won’t have to consume your Box.net account space with video files. Syncing the video files to the iPad is simple and works similarly to syncing the photos. The videos are stored in a folder and then that folder is synced to the iPad, and you are done. (Note: All videos I am testing with are Apple-compatible MP4 files so they play with no problem on the iPad. It is outside of our scope here to launch into an analysis of all of the different kinds of video files that can be used, that is a long discussion for another time).

Viewing the videos works simply enough in the iPad Videos app. You can view them full screen and everything looks nice. But once again you bump into an inherent limitation of the device, which in this case seems odd given that one of its intended strong points is as a media consumption device. There is no way to organize your video files into some sort of groups, which is always handy once you start to get a big collection. Having things broken up into categories of some kind helps to make it easier to find the one item you need at the moment.  With the Videos app, your videos are just dumped into one location and that’s all you get. It would be great to be able to create some folders, or to organize them into categories in some way, but no such luck at least for now on the iPad. So while the iPad is a nice tool for viewing videos, the file management aspect limitations knock it down to about a B- in my opinion.

Menu of videos as seen in the iPad Videos app.

Using the iPad to show information to audiences

All of the options described so far are suitable for showing product information to one person or a small group of people using the iPad. Sometimes we have the requirement to show information to a larger group of people. This is also possible but will require the purchase of extra accessories that don’t come with the iPad.

There are two basic ways to go for this requirement: You can connect the iPad to a projector or to an HDTV. One way to do this is with the Apple Digital AV Adaptor, part number MC953ZM/A. This is commonly available from Apple or other merchants for around $39.00 US.

The Apple Digital AV Adapter

This accessory is connected to the iPad connector port and the other end is connected to an HDMI cable. I have tested this with a typical 1080p HDTV and it does indeed work well. Note that apparently there are differences in the way this adapter works between an iPad 1 and an iPad 2. With the iPad 2 it is possible to run in “mirrored” mode where everything that is on the iPad screen shows up on the TV. Note that some things look a bit strange due to the difference in the aspect ratios, HDTVs being  16:9 (or 1.77) while the iPad is 4:3 (or 1.33). For example when viewing a portrait PDF file, it will sit in the middle of the HDTV screen with a lot of blank space on either side. But pictures and video work very well through this adaptor. Video is played directly on the HDTV fullscreen and if there is sound it is passed through the HDMI cable to the TV.

Presumably this adaptor would work equally well with a project that has an HDMI connector, although I have not tested this yet. Unfortunately if you need to connect to a projector that is lacking an HDMI input, you will need to purchase yet another adapter which is the Apple VGA Adapter for about $29.00.  I have not tested this adapter yet.

What about interactive multimedia content?

We have established that the iPad has decent potential for presenting company and product information in the form of documents, pictures, and videos.  It is good to be able to show these sorts of files, but it has limitations as well. This is a haphazard collection or information that can only be semi-organized to make browsing the information easier if there is a lot of it. For presenting product information it would be better to have an interactive application that would have some sort of front-end interface with buttons or links that the user can use to select various options, narrow down choices, and so forth. The ideal way to accomplish this would be to create an iPad app custom-made for this purpose. There are all sorts of iPad apps that are available that serve this purpose. There is one major drawback to this approach however: you must have the programming resources to create and publish an iPad app. It is not a simple undertaking for a company without internal programming capability, and I have read that the total cost to create one simple iPad app can approach $25,000. For companies with limited budgets this is not a viable option.

One decent way to produce interactive content with a much lower investment in tools and time is using Flash. Unfortunately Flash is completely locked out of the iPad at this time so this is not an option.

Another possible way is via the latest web design standards such as HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and others. In fact, one good way to display interactive content on an iPad is simply via web pages from the internet opened in the Safari browser. As long as the web pages have been properly constructed they will display well on the iPad, and you will have a way to provide interactive content with links to various pages, pictures, etc. However this method also has a major drawback – it requires a connection to the internet either via wireless or 3g. If you are in the situation that we are typically in within our work environment, it will be fairly common to be at a location where wireless internet access is not available (this is due to visiting companies with locked-down network infrastructure).  So the best way to exploit HTML5 and related technology would be to store the web pages locally. Once again we run into a constraint as there is no particularly easy way to do this. It is possible to save a web page as an archive file, put it in Box.net, and then view it offline. But there is still limited functionality as far as interactive linking between pages. This area is newly developing and needs more investigation as new tools are coming online.

Push versus Pull Product Presentation via the iPad

When we discuss the idea of a company employee bringing an iPad to a customer to show them product information, regardless of which of the above methods is used, we are talking about a “Push” presentation. In other words, we have garnered an audience with the customer and we will use that moment in time to show our information. This is great and it is something we do all of the time. But the other way that a customer could get our information is via “Pull”. In this case, the customer will look at the information on their own, assuming it is available to them and they have some interest. This has the advantage that the customer can look at our product information at any time without us needing to be there. Of course, any time a customer goes on the internet on their own and finds our company web pages and reads the product information that is there, this is a Pull kind of interaction. This sort of Pull marketing is a trend for the future and the new crop of mobile devices such as the iPad are contributing greatly to that process. A major strength of the iPad is easy-to-use, portable, and convenient web-surfing. Besides being a tool we could use to present information to our customers, the iPad becomes another way that a customer could access our information on their own. It would be ideal to offer them an iPad app that would do that, but we can still take advantage of this interaction by making sure that our web pages are properly designed to display well on an iPad in addition to other computing devices. In this case we can hopefully assume that customers will be using the iPad while connected to the internet, so our content will be available to them.

Conclusions

The iPad does have good potential for use as a presentation tool to show customers product and company information. With a little bit of planning it is possible to share documents, presentations, images and videos. It can be used for small groups or large groups of people with the right tools.

When compared to the tool we have typically used for this purpose, the laptop computer, the iPad:

Advantages: Instant-on, easy to hand around form factor makes the sharing process much smoother with less awkward fumbling around. Also it is unlikely that we would even have to worry about battery power assuming we start with a good charge, something that is often an issue with laptops resulting in more fumbling for cords, outlets, etc.

Disadvantages: We are still a bit hamstrung by the lack of a cohesive file system which can be used to organize information. The lockout of Flash makes some things more difficult.

Office applications are fairly commonly used in the business world. The exact programs and files that are used are going to be different for different companies but there is some common ground. Here we frequently use the common three Office programs in our work: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. We also exchange and also create a lot of PDF files. So the question is, how are these handled on the iPad? Once again, the situation is going to be different depending on the task at hand. You can break down the usage of these files into 2 major categories:

• Viewing. This refers to the need to simply open a file and look at it to review the information inside.
• Editing/Creating. This is opening a file that has been previously created by you or someone else and editing it in some way, or creating a new file from scratch.

Viewing Office Documents

Let’s take the easiest case first: VIEWING Office documents. The first question is: How do the files get to the iPad in the first place? As discussed in Part 1 of this series, you don’t have a “file system” on the iPad. You can’t for example connect it to another PC and then “copy over” a bunch of files. You can’t stick in a memory card to access or copy files from; there is no memory card slot. And you don’t have a single app where you can browse the memory of the iPad to find Office files.  You have to work within the iPad concept to move these files in and out. There are a few ways to do it.

One simple and common occurrence is to receive a file via email. If you are using the iPad Mail app then viewing documents will be easy, as this app has the built-in ability to open and view Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files, along with a variety of other file types. You just touch the attachment icon and the file will open in full screen.  The formatting does not always come out perfect for some of these, but it is useful enough. If you receive the email via the Safari web browser by logging into your email account, you have a similar capability to view the files directly in the browser. So there is no problem opening and viewing Office document, although you cannot do any editing from this viewer.

iPad Email with Word Doc Attachment

Word doc as seen in the iPad viewer

So things are easy enough as far as viewing these files, but what about storing them on the iPad so you can access them later? Yes you can just leave the email sitting in the iPad to access later, but that can become disorganized over time. What if you have a bunch of them that you would like to store, preferably in some organized manner with named folders? This is where things start to get a bit messy since the iPad has no internal file storage system. But there are ways to deal with it that work reasonably well.

Internet-Based File Storage

A common way to manage files on the iPad is via an internet based file storage application such as Dropbox, Box, or any of the other similar services that have popped up. For this test I have set up a Box account at www.box.net. This is a service that provides sharing of business documents online. You can share files for yourself among multiple devices such as your desktop computer, your iPad, and others, and you can also share files with other people if you wish. The service can be used for free with some limitations on capability and storage space. With a free account you get 5 GB of storage which is similar to the other services, but a recent bonus is that by upgrading your iPad OS5 you will get bumped up to 50 GB of free storage at Box.net, which is a pretty nice deal. Once you exceed your allotment of free space you will need to pay for more space, this is how these companies make their money. But 50 GB is a pretty solid amount of space to work with.

Once you have set up an account at Box, you have a browser interface where you can create folders and upload files from your computer using drag and drop from a file explorer, so you can create an organized set of files on the service.  Then you can install the Box app onto your iPad, log in, and all the files will be there in the app (assuming you are connected to the internet). This type of service has an additional benefit that is critical for our own business operations: you can determine which files you want to download locally into the iPad memory. This is important because we often will need access to certain files in a location where there is no wireless internet access available, for example, in a business that has a locked-down IT structure, or in an airport or other location where we prefer not to pay extra money for accessing the internet. Having the files stored locally is a big advantage for these situations, and setting it within Box is a simple checkbox to click.

So with a free Box.net installation, the file storage issue is addressed in a fairly convenient way. You can keep files “in the cloud” up in the Box servers, or decide to download some or all of them into the iPad memory for access anytime without an internet connection. If you tap any of the documents, they open in a similar file viewer that you see when looking at email attachments.

Box.net file system on the iPad

It should also be possible to share files among multiple users which is also a big requirement for many business applications. Currently we do extensive file sharing of marketing files via Microsoft Groove, or as it is now called Sharepoint Workspace. Groove is a sort of hybrid peer-to-peer file sharing setup that allows files to be shared securely among multiple users.  It is a brilliantly executed application due to its reliability, simplicity, and ability to manage hundreds or even thousands of files, keeping them synchronized among dozens of users, and all with minimal effort on the part of the users AND without the need for any server hardware. Unfortunately Groove does not operate in the tablet environment, so at least in our case this forces us to consider alternatives such as Box.net.  While Box.net has the basic functionality that is needed, this is not an ideal situation as now we are faced with having to manage file sharing on multiple applications. This is never ideal for the business IT environment, we want to keep things as simple as possible to keep everyone working at full speed and to minimize support costs.

We have established that we can view Office files and store them for access on the iPad. Now how about editing or creating Office documents? There are a number of apps that are available for that purpose.  These include Quickoffice, Smart Office, Documents 2 Go, iWork , Office2 HD and others. It is fairly easy to search the internet and find reviews on the utility of these apps. Fortunately none of these are too expensive, in the range of $10-30, so you could even try different ones to find out what works best for you. After reading some reviews, I decided to just pick one and try it out, so here I will discuss the Office2 HD app. With this app you get the capability to work with Documents, Spreadsheets or Presentations. You can create new files or open and edit  existing ones. It connects to your file app in order to access files. For example, if you are using Box as I described above, then there is a Box icon in the Office 2 HD file browser where you can access those files for opening or saving. It all works simply enough. But once you start to work on your Office apps, things start to fall apart quickly and the weaknesses of the iPad become painfully apparent.

Yes, you can edit a Word document or create a new one, and access a basic set of formatting functions. As long as you can work within the confines of the virtual keyboard it works OK. It would work OK for basic work with Word docs.   Once you move to spreadsheets the lack of a keyboard and mouse makes any sort of halfway serious work impractical. On top of this, the iPad can only open one thing at a time, which is very limiting. For example, a common task we would perform would be to create a quotation for a customer. This is done by copying some cells from one spreadsheet  into another spreadsheet. You can’t have two spreadsheets open at the same time, so you have to copy some cells, close that spreadsheet, open the new one, and paste them, then repeat this process over and over until it is done. On top of that, selecting cells to copy using the touch interface can only be described as annoyingly tedious. The bottom line: Such a process isn’t even remotely practical at all.

If you only need to do some basic work with some Word documents, the iPad will get you buy. But if you want to do anything halfway serious at all using spreadsheets, I think you would run out or patience quickly. Adding on top of this weakness is the fact that if you need to run any mission-critical Windows applications, such as a CRM or any other software package, the iPad is most likely not going to be an option at all.

Conclusions

If you want to use the iPad only for viewing Office documents and other files such as PDFs, it will work with no problem. Once you can get a file system set up such as Dropbox or Box you will be able to access your files that you upload there, and even download them into the iPad memory for offline access.

If you want to do some minor editing work in a Word document, the iPad will get you by. But if you need to do any serious business work with documents and spreadsheets the lack of multitasking capability and the lack of a keyboard and mouse will grind you to a halt quickly. Therefore if you have that requirement, it does not seem practical to replace a laptop with the iPad if you are traveling.  This combined with the lack of ability to run any critical business Windows applications you may have, means that you will need the laptop to do any real work, which of course means that you need to leave the iPad behind, or face the alternative of carrying two devices which is always undesirable for business travel where traveling light is most practical.

While the iPad excelled for business use as far as email (see Part 2 of this series), when it comes to working with Office files, unfortunately it is barely usable at all.

Part 2: Email

Email is a critical tool in the workplace. Like virtually any connected device, the iPad certainly can handle email out of the box. However there are some differences between the casual user and the business user when managing email that should to be taken into consideration to determine if the iPad functions well in this regard. There are two aspects to consider: 1) The type of email account and 2) How email is managed by the user

For the first part we should consider what type of email account is being used. There are several possible variations of how business email is handled, depending on the internal systems implemented at each company. Email can be run completely in the cloud, such as with a Google Gmail system, or it can be server-based such as a Microsoft Exchange system or another hosted server system.

For the second part we consider how email is managed by the user and what role the iPad would play. There are two basic methods that people use to manage their email:

1. Keep all emails and attempt to organize them within the email software via folders or tagging.
2. Attempt to deal with emails as quickly as possible and then delete each email as soon as it has been taken care of. This is the “zero inbox” approach.

In addition we should consider the role that the iPad plays for any person’s email management. Will it be the primary tool for managing email? Or, as a portable device, will it be a secondary tool that supplements another computer? This question is less relevant to any email system that is cloud-based since the messages will reside in the cloud one way or the other. But for any server-based email system the decision becomes critical because it is necessary to configure the settings so that emails don’t get scattered in multiple locations and become lost.

Since I am managing multiple email accounts at several different companies that use different types of services, along with several personal email accounts, I can test the various possibilities and see how the iPad fares. Personally, I prefer the zero inbox approach to managing email. I want to process each message as it arrives in the most efficient and quickest way possible. If the message does not need further action after being read, I want to delete it so it is not in my inbox ever again (the same for spam that sneaks through the filters of course). If I perform a task associated with that email and therefore no action is needed,  again I will delete it from the inbox. If the email needs to be saved for future reference, I will save it in the proper location where it can be found later, and then delete it. Again, my primary goal is that if I only need to look at an email once and then delete it, I want it to be completely gone so that I don’t have to waste time looking at it again.

The iPad comes with a built-in Mail application. This app is configured in the Settings app. There you can add your email account by entering in the appropriate configuration settings, selecting the type of email system you are using from a menu as shown below. Once that is successfully done you now have a “push” email client in operation, in other words you don’t have to check your email, it will automatically come in for you, and you can read, reply and do other operations. This sort of push email application is easier to work with then a “pull” method, such as signing  into a browser and entering your user name and password to access the inbox.

iPad Email Settings

Hotmail

Handling Hotmail is much improved with the OS 5 update as there is now direct support for Hotmail from the Add Account menu. Prior to OS 5 it was necessary to configure Hotmail as “Other” and enter the Pop3 and SMTP settings manually. Even better, the Hotmail client in the iPad Mail app works just as it should. If messages are deleted there they are also deleted on the Hotmail server, so if you check it from somewhere else everything will be synchronized. You can also synchronize any custom folders you have made on your Hotmail server account.  The iPad Mail app is thus ideal for managing Hotmail on a “push” basis. As shown below, all you need is your email address and password to get Hotmail set up.

iPad Email Setup - Hotmail

Gmail (Including Google Apps for Business)

The Gmail setup is very similar to Hotmail. After your email address and password are entered in this settings window you will have access to your Gmail through the iPad Mail app. This push app also functions as it should: Deleted emails are synchronized between the Mail app and the Gmail server, allowing you to use the iPad to keep up with your emails while keeping everything coordinated.

I have also checked this with a corporate Gmail account on Google Apps for Business and everything behaves as it should.

iPad Email Setup - Gmail

POP3 Email

This is an email system that is hosted on a server somewhere.  The emails are typically accessed from a desktop from an email software package, usually Microsoft Outlook. An account is configured in Outlook to set up the POP3 server (incoming mail) and SMTP server (outgoing mail). Similarly, a POP/SMTP  email account can be configured on the iPad.  When setting up this type of system, one of the key parameters is “Leave a Copy of Messages on Server”.  This setting determines whether messages are deleted from the server once you Receive them into Outlook. If you use only one computer then it makes sense to delete the messages from the server, as this will prevent the server from filling up with messages as time goes by. If you are checking mail from more than one computer, for example if you check mail from a laptop while traveling, then typically you select this setting and leave the messages on the server so that when you return to your primary computer you will be able to retrieve messages that came in while you were traveling. If you don’t do it this way, you will end up with messages scattered among multiple computers and it can become an organizational mess.

In addition to this, if you are using a secondary computer while traveling, it is also ideal that if you do decide to delete a message (because it is garbage, or not needed, or whatever reason) then it should be deleted from the server. This way, when you get back to your primary computer and download the email that came in while you were gone, you won’t have to deal with emails that you deleted from your laptop.

The iPad also functions just as expected for the POP/SMTP email system. When setting up the account there is an Advanced setting where you can decide if you Never want to delete emails from the server, or if you want them deleted when you delete them from the inbox (which is my choice). This means that the iPad Mail app operates perfectly for managing a POP/SMTP account as a secondary device. If you wanted to use the iPad as your primary and sole device for email with this type of account, it could be done, but you would need to decide how to handle any email content that you wanted to transfer out of the email system, an area where the iPad becomes more limited.

Microsoft Exchange Email

The final configuration is a Microsoft Exchange email account. There is a button to set up an Exchange email account in the settings. As long as you can get  the correct server and domain settings to go along with your email address and password, it should work. These will be supplied from whoever is managing the Exchange system. The iPad Mail app functionality for the Exchange email service works the same way as the POP/SMTP system. When it downloads the emails, it leaves the messages on the server so you will be able to access them from your primary computer later. If a message is deleted from the inbox it will then be deleted from the Exchange server so you won’t see it when you do a Receive from another computer. This means that once again the iPad works perfectly as expected for managing email.

Web Access for Emails

In addition to using the iPad Mail app for all these type of email accounts, it is also easy to access any of them from the Safari browser if you prefer that alternative. This is a “pull” method rather than “push”, which means you need to make the effort to launch the browser and log in to get your email within a web page. It is not as convenient as the “push” method like the Mail app, but some may prefer to get their email in that fashion. This can be done just as it would be on any other platform using a browser:

• Hotmail. If you enter www.hotmail.com you will be taken to a mobile login screen for Windows Live. From there you can sign in and manage your Hotmail from the browser. Bonus: The mobile version of Hotmail on the iPad is ad-free unlike the free desktop version, so you get a nice clean interface.
•  Gmail. Similar to Hotmail you will enter your email address and password into a Gmail web page that then works the same as Gmail does from any browser.
• POP/SMTP. You can log in via whatever browser-based system is provided by your host. Or as an alternative, www.mail2web.com always works well for this type of email system.
• Exchange. Your Exchange provider or admin should provide you with a web address for a web access version of Outlook where you can manage your email from the browser.

Conclusions

When it comes to managing business email, the iPad is a clear winner. The most common use in the work environment is likely to be as a secondary mobile device to be used when traveling or anytime you are away from your primary computer, although if desired it is feasible that it could be used as the primary tool for managing email. The convenient “push” capability of the Mail app combined with compatibility for all major work-based email systems (that I tested) combined with the portability and instant-on makes the iPad a great tool for managing email. Of course access to a wireless internet connection is required if you have the wireless-only version (which I currently have). If you have a 3G-capable version then you would be able to manage email anywhere cellular access is available, but with the requirement to pay a monthly charge.

Using the virtual keyboard should work out well for composing emails unless you are planning to write a novel.

Because of its overall convenience, the iPad easily outdoes a laptop or netbook as a convenient tool for managing email while on the go. The only thing that can beat it is the ultimate email management device – the Blackberry (or other smartphone), which wins out only by virtue of being guaranteed to always be in my pocket.

Introduction

The iPad is the most popular tablet device at this time, and its usage seems to be expanding, along with an increasing market for other tablet devices. Here I will focus on the iPad as it relates to use in the work environment. The concept of the tablet is still somewhat new, and there is some confusion about exactly what it can and cannot do. There is no denying that the form factor is very convenient : small, portable, and easy to use. Some believe that the iPad could be a replacement for a desktop and/or laptop computer used in the workplace. This may or may not be the case, it depends on a number of factors.

There are various articles, blogs and so forth already available that discuss the use of the iPad in the workplace. Some of these are very useful and contain good information about possible tools (apps) that can be used. However, these tend to be somewhat “big-picture” views lacking in the detail needed to make a good analysis. My goal is to perform an in-depth test on all aspects of using the iPad in the work environment and ferret out the good parts, the bad parts, and finally to draw conclusions about what can be done.

Of course referring to the “workplace environment”  in general would be a huge target scope. There are all sorts of different things that get done in all sorts of different workplaces and industry segments. What works in the context of some workplaces will be irrelevant to others. By necessity, I will be focusing on specific workplace tasks and functions that are part of the daily business operations of the companies I work for. The analysis will focus on the potential uses of the iPad within these contexts:

• A supplement and/or replacement for a laptop computer being used by geographically dispersed employees to run typical business applications: email, office suite, CRM (customer relationship management database) and internet browsing.
• A potential tool for presenting company and product information to customers, for example pictures, video and text that might currently be shown using a laptop or desktop computer.

Testing is done using a 32 GB Wi-Fi IPad 2 (referred to as iPad for brevity).

Part 1. The user interface and file management

It is worthwhile to review the basic way the iPad works, and it is also important to be aware that the iPad, like other tablets, is NOT a laptop computer melded into a cooler form factor. There are significant differences in the concepts of construction and operation that may or may not impact certain tasks required for work.

The User Interface: Organizing and Launching Programs (Apps)

The user interface is very simple to use and should be easy enough for anyone to figure out, particularly if they have already been using a smartphone which many of our employees have. Basically all of your programs (which we now call apps) are represented by icons on the screen. If you want to run an app you put your finger on it and it launches. It could hardly be simpler.

Since the majority of people I know set up their Windows screen with a pile of shortcut icons to launch their programs and seem comfortable with that sort of interaction, moving to this concept presents no issues.

It is also possible to set up multiple screens which you can easily slide horizontally using your fingers. So you can set up a screen for work apps and another one for personal apps as one example. And, if desired, it is possible to create folders and put multiple app icons inside of those.

The iPad does not have true multitasking ability. You basically use one program at a time. When you want to do something else you close that one and open the one you want next.  This doesn’t seem to be an issue for typical business app usage. Most people are doing one thing at a time for the majority of their daily work tasks. More complex work such as production of media that would require a high level of multitasking isn’t really suited for the tablet form factor anyway.

The User Interface: Entering Text

An obvious difference between a tablet and a typical computer is the lack of a physical keyboard. Text entry is done by using a virtual keyboard on the screen. Again since many of our employees have been using no-keyboard smartphones for some time this concept should be familiar. But does it work well enough for daily work use? Maybe.

The virtual keyboard will become available when you need it, for example as shown here in the web browser. In general, using the keyboard works pretty well. It isn’t a huge issue to enter text, even fairly large amounts of text although you probably would prefer a physical keyboard to create a multipage Word document or the like. It is easy to shift characters and call up a numeric keypad.

However, there is one flaw in the virtual keyboard that at times can be fairly annoying. There are no arrow keys that you could use to move the cursor left, right, up or down when it is in a block of text. In addition, there is no Delete key, just one Backspace key that will delete the character immediately to the left of the cursor. This can make it difficult to get the cursor just where you want it. There are some things you can do to help the situation, for example you can expand the screen with a finger gesture and that will sometimes, but not always expand the text, making it easy to point and put the cursor where you want it. You can also hold your finger down to get a magnifying glass that sometimes helps, but not always. The fact is, at times it becomes very tedious to try to get the cursor in place within text to make an edit, and this slows things down. Unnecessary slowdowns are one thing we don’t tolerate well in our daily work. As to why there can’t be a few more buttons for arrows in the virtual keypad, who knows? But regardless of the workarounds, this is an annoyance.

File Management

As we work, we use a lot of files. We use documents, PDF files, spreadsheets, text files, presentation files, pictures, videos and so forth. We are used to sharing these files back and forth among ourselves and among our different devices, for example, between a desktop computer and a laptop computer.  The way these files are handled represents possibly the biggest difference between the iPad and a traditional computer such as a laptop.

The iPad does not have a “hard drive” where you would store and organize your files. On our computers we are pretty much used to the idea of storing files in folders where we can access them later. We might have a folder named “2011″ where we can store our files associated for that year. We might even have more folders inside the “2011″ folder named Jan, Feb, Mar etc to further organize our files. If we create a file (for example write a Word document) or if we receive a file (for example by email) then we know where to put the file within our folder structure. When we need to find the file again, we know how to browse for it using an explorer window.

The iPad has no such file storage system built-in. You cannot browse all of the files that are stored on the iPad from a single simple application. The files are in there, but they are stored away somewhat cryptically. In order to find a given file you need to launch an app that is associate with it. Then you will be able to access the files that are associated with that app. For example, use the Photo app to access pictures, or use iTunes to access audio files.

Also, there is no simple way to “just put” files onto your iPad. You can’t copy a bunch of files onto an SD card and then stick that in the iPad and copy them over. You can’t connect it to your computer with a USB cable and copy them over. There are ways to get the files onto your iPad of course, but it is not a simple and straightforward operation like it could possibly be. There are also apps that can step in and help this situation. I will address these in more detail when I discuss work-specific apps in a later post.

File Management: Memory

We tend to use quite a few of the aforementioned files (docs, spreadsheets, pictures, videos, etc) in our daily work, and these can start to add up as far as the amount of space that is used. Also, the iPad memory is shared between all of the installed apps and your own files. However, with the smallest capacity model being 16 GB and a 32 GB version costing not too much more, the available memory should be sufficient for most business operations.

Conclusions

We have started with a basic analysis of the tablet form factor in comparison to computer alternatives. Overall there are not any glaring deficiencies for the iPad for work use. The user interface, the virtual keyboard, and the file management all can function well enough. The virtual keyboard has its annoyances but it should work well enough for most tasks. The way that files are handled is not ideal but it can be worked around. Counterbalancing the shortcomings are the positive attributes of the iPad form factor. The portability, instant-on capability and simple user interface make it extremely easy and pleasant to use for its major intended targets: Surfing the internet, basic email, and media experience.

It is possible to supplement the iPad with additional hardware to address some of these issues. For example, it is not uncommon to see a mechanical keyboard attached to it for text entry. And it is even possible to connect it with a hard drive for big capacity. At this time I am not even venturing into that territory. It seems to me once you go to these lengths you might as well be using a laptop or a netbook.

Coming next: Work Email on the iPad.

Your computer has a virus. You want to know how to get rid of the virus. This is a perfectly reasonable desire and request. I am very sorry to have to say that this is a very bad situation to be in at the time of this writing. There was a time in the past where it was reasonably possible to eliminate a contracted virus by doing some internet searching and getting access to a few removal tools. Often in the time of an hour or two a virus could be identified and completely removed from a system, and life then went on as normal.

Sadly, those days are gone.

The viruses (and worms and Trojan horses and so on) have continually evolved over the years. They are stronger, nastier, and far more resistant to removal than ever. It is true that the ANTI-virus software has also evolved over the years and has become better, stronger, and more efficient. But the power of the anti-virus software lies in its ability to prevent a virus in the first place, not in its ability to knock one out once it has entered the system.

The current crop of viruses, in addition to whatever bad things they were made for, now include built-in measures to defeat your very attempts to remove them. This means that as soon as you have figured out that you have contracted a virus, you immediately will start down a winding path of frustration. Your first logical and reasonable response will be to fire up your virus scanner (you are running a virus scanner, right?) and see if you can identify and then remove the virus. Knowing that this is the very first thing you will try to do, the virus includes measures to block that attempt. It will block your ability to launch your virus scanner, or, if you can launch it, it will behave very oddly or erratically. You will be stopped in your tracks in your effort to rid yourself of that virus. An old trick was to go to a completely online virus scanner which runs independently of your system. These are also defeated as well. You will find it impossible to visit any website that has a legitimate anti-virus program or tool on it. No matter what you try in your efforts to identify and remove the virus, you will go around and around in a vicious circle as the virus anticipates your every move and defeats it.

If you do manage to make some headway, the virus will likely lash back at you very aggressively. You will find that all of sudden your system will not respond at all. If you reboot, you will be staring at nothing but a short message: “Unable to boot”. Your computer is now dead, and worse, it could be that all of the information that was on your hard drive is gone forever.

Wait. You must be thinking: surely there is SOME way, or SOMEbody who can get rid of these viruses. Well, there is. There are people who can do it. It takes specialized knowledge and specialized tools. You will need to seek one of these people out to help you. And you will need to pay them.

And that is the problem. For even the best people with the best tools, it can take hours to get rid of a virus and get a system back to its original condition (I have seen several cases where it took 8 to 16 hours to remove  virus). And you will be paying by the hour. The sad fact is, given how cheap computers are nowadays you more than likely will exceed the cost of an entire new computer with your virus repair bill.

If your system has degenerated to the “blackout” scenario and won’t respond it all, it can still be brought back to life by reinstalling the OS (Windows) and all of your software, after which you will then copy over your backed up data. These steps will also take several hours to accomplish. IF you did not have your data backed up then it may be possible to recover it using specialized services. But this will take even more time and money.

Making the situation even worse (if that is possible): it is fairly likely that if you have one virus, you have others. The fact that one virus has managed to sneak in by definition means that the conditions exist to allow others to enter. In fact, I have seen a number of systems that were brought to me with “a virus” that were actually riddled with multiple viruses. You can probably imagine that this makes the removal/repair process even more difficult.

I didn’t start this out by saying “you should take these preventive measures and you should back up your data”. Because this information is intended for those who have already been attacked with a virus. I realize it doesn’t do any good to tell you what you SHOULD have done when it is already too late.

Sadly, I simply cannot report any good news or offer help. Even though I have helped people troubleshoot computers for more than 25 years, at this time I won’t even consider taking on a computer that is contaminated with a virus. I probably could figure out how to fix it, but it would take too much of my time and consume too much of your money. All I can do is recommend that you find someone who is willing to take it and attempt the repair, such as a local computer company (there are lots of them) or a service such as Best Buy offers, and wish you the best of luck.

Maybe someday the situation will improve. It is a race between those who would do damage and those that would protect us from damage. It will shift over time, but who knows in whose favor.

Meanwhile….

I BEG you. If you happen to be reading this and you do NOT have a virus: Please, please, please take the time and effort to implement strong preventative measures so that this never happens in the first place. These things are annoying. They are time-consuming. They are tedious. They are boring. But trust me, the amount of pain is MUCH, MUCH less than the pain you will experience if you get a virus. It is a horrible thing to go through, and I see it far too often. So consider this seriously. It really will be worth your time.

• Install a virus scanner. There are many to choose from. Some are even free. Examples are Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), Trendmicro, AVG, McAfee, Symantec, Kapersky,and Avast. They are all reputable and good. It is fairly easy to find reviews of these programs if you want to compare them. Be sure you select one and get it installed. I use MSE and it has worked well for me.
• Keep the virus scanner up to date. Virus definitions need to be updated to keep up with the latest viruses. Be sure your virus scanner’s virus definitions are kept up to date. This should be done daily. Most virus scanners will do this automatically via their default install settings (assuming you connect to the internet).
• Run a full scan weekly. Run a full system scan with the virus scanner once per week. This might take a while, even 30 minutes or more depending on your system. Pick a time (like dinnertime or bedtime) where you can turn on the scan and walk away and let it do its thing.
• Run an online scan monthly. Most of the antivirus software companies offer a free online scanner, such as http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ . Running this one a month is a double-layer of preventive medicine, just to make sure.
• MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: Use caution at all times, especially when “surfing the net”. You must consider everything as a potential threat. Nowadays a virus can be hidden in all sorts of places. They can be embedded in PDF files, JPG pictures, Word documents, you name it. If these come your way in an email, especially from unknown people, think twice before opening them. In fact, think twice before opening anything even from your friends, because you don’t know how secure their own computer is. If you are in doubt, scan the file with your virus scanner before you open it. If your virus definitions are up to date (to the day) it should catch it if there is a virus there.  Finally, you also must be very careful with any web page you visit. It is frightening to know that the simple act of visiting a web page can cause a virus to be launched and infected into your system, all without you even knowing. The virus authors are extremely clever and they know exactly what sorts of things people are interested in and will do web searches for, and they will create web page designed to entice you to click after you have done an internet search. I can’t tell you that you should only visit web sites that you KNOW are reputable, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Apple, etc. That would pretty much defeat the whole point of the internet. You just have to use common sense and try not to visit any site that looks funny or suspicious. Unfortunately like everything else the virus authors have improved their web page designs, so that “bad” pages are much less obviously “fake” than they used to be (full of spelling errors, sloppily formatted, etc). Finally, NEVER click on any window, pop-up or link that is telling you that you have a virus, unless you are 100% sure it is from your own installed and running virus scanner. These are insidious programs that will promptly install a virus as soon as you click on the button that says it will get rid of your virus. As crazy as this sounds, it is all too true.
• Back up your data. Always be sure you are backing up all of your personal data. This includes everything that is personally yours: Your documents, pictures, videos, and so forth. You should always assume that some point in time you will completely lose all of your data due to hard disk crash or virus infection. It is very much possible. If you have your data backed up you will be able recover with a minimum amount of pain. I will cover exactly how to back up your data in another post and link it here when it is ready.

Let me repeat one last time:

The preventative measures, painful as they are, are much, much, much less painful than the consequences of getting a contamination.