Could the iPad Replace a PC for a Businessperson?

Apple has never claimed that the iPad could replace a notebook or desktop computer, but there’s no harm in considering the actual possibility, right? As a whole, the iPad is a rather robust little machine, but with its lacking multi-tasking ability, and overall simple design, could it even possibly have the hope of becoming a one-stop device for a regular consumer? How about a businessperson?

Pat Moorhead, AMD’s VP of Strategy and Senior Marketing Fellow, decided to put that thought to a real test and used an iPad for an entire week in lieu of a notebook or desktop. As someone working with such a large company, you’d imagine that Pat has to rely on a computer for a lot of different things throughout the course of the day, so his situation seems ideal for a test like this.

He relayed his entire experience in a recent blog post, and his findings fall almost right in line with what I was expecting. For the most part, the iPad can work well in many situations, but in others, it falls flat on its face. A couple of Pat’s favorite features included the size of the device, the quick turn-on and also the simple convenience. He normally carries around an Acer Ferrari 13″ netbook, and still found the iPad to be much more convenient.

There were a couple occasions where Pat had to go back to a PC to take advantage of a certain task, most notably printing. Even though Apple offers a couple of work apps for the iPad, there’s surprisingly no ability to print easily. To make things even worse, if you create a document with any of the supplied tools, you can only export as PDF (with the exception of “Pages”), which makes editing on another machine impossible.

Another major issue Pat found was the lack of a simple file manager. The reason this is a problem is that if you need to e-mail a document, you must first load up the application it was created under, and then send it that way. It’s a “major” problem because if you are already in another app, you must first close it down, due to the lack of multi-tasking. Along the same lines, Pat was unable to stream music and do something else at the same time.

For the most part though, Pat still seems rather pleased with the experience, and I’m rather impressed that he managed to make it through an entire week relying on it alone. There’s a lot that could be fixed, but it does appear that there is good hopes for tablets in work environments in the future.

Unlike my PC, there is no file management system on the iPad. So if you want a common place to find your files, you are out of luck. To find a file, I needed to remember which application I created it in, open that app, and then email or open it from there. That was possibly the most frustrating thing about the iPad work experience. To import or export files to or from the iPad, I needed to use iTunes, select the app that can edit it, drag the files from your PC to that app on iTunes, synch the iPad, open the app on the iPad, click the file icon in the upper right corner that looks like a file, select the file you wish to import, and it is now imported. Whew….