CompTIA CIO Reviews iPad

I went to the Apple Store on iPad Release Day ‘just to look’ and walked right in, thinking that an inevitable sellout would make a purchase decision moot. When I asked if any were left, they had plenty, and I broke down and bought one.  I’m normally not an early adopter, but figured I’d cave to the months of hype that culminated in the hilarious Modern Family ‘adisode’.

After a week and a half, here are my first set of use cases, albeit after the fact.

1.      Act as a babysitter for my child - don’t judge me for this, and I won’t judge you.

2.      Replace my laptop for most web surfing, albeit with Flash excluded.

3.      Act as a mini game console while I’m watching TV (I’m addicted to Flight Control HD)

4.      Let me bang out half an hour of email in a more comfortable way than my mobile device

Now to the scoring.  I’m ashamed to admit how long my 5 year old can play on it, but I will say that he is a great advertisement for battery life that is well beyond a standard laptop.  The web surfing is quick, and more comfortable for casual reading.  The games really are fun in my opinion, and I’m excited to see the next evolution. Writing email and status reports has been pretty easy for me on the device.

Sure, the Wifi signal drops every now and then, some of the apps crash, and it doesn’t have a webcam. As a CIO, I think I might be more aware that buggy software is unavoidable, all hardware is ultimately fungible, and that perfection is an ever elusive target.  What excites me about the iPad is that it brings tablet/touch computing to the forefront of mainstream discussion, and will promote further discussion and unforeseen opportunities across the IT Channel.

Am I going to replace laptops across the association with iPads or equivalent tablets? For now, no. Within the corporate environment, could/should tablets be used in unique ways as presentation or automation controllers, or laptop replacements on long trips?  Probably so.  Should you buy an iPad, a Slate, a JooJoo, a Dell Mini, or a yet to be released variation?  From the perspective of technology vendor-neutral trade association, I’ll say that I celebrate all technology, and you should too.

Randy