A “PC guy” since their inception… however, I waited in line… the “No Reservation” line to be exact. There were two categories… one line the those die-hard Apple Fans that would be there even if they were unveiling a new “Lisa”, and the other line for the curious and unprepared. I fell into the latter category. My daughter waited with me, and oddly enough, with an equal amount of excitement.

We finally made it inside and found that they’re stock was plentiful. Then, my daughter congratulated me on the purchase of my first Apple computer… Was that really what just happened…? A PC guy just went to the “other side”…? Very possibly so… however, I’m not giving up my ProBook as of yet…

I have to say that I’m very impressed with this device! Its grown on me the last couple of days… but I promise to give it up when I purchase the new 3G version due out later this month.

Out of the box, I was already familiar with the user interface as it’s almost identical to my iPhone. The new LED screen is extremely clear and makes for easy reading and the touch interface is amazingly accurate… An app that I use frequently, the calculator, is missing for some reason… but it’s an easy add for .99 …

While the iPad offers no multi-tasking capability, I didn’t notice that at being a huge drawback… I guess that allows me to focus on one thing at a time… and, when I need to get back to what I was working on previously, it takes less time to get there than the “hourglass” I’m used to on my laptop… The new A4 technology makes this unit is extremely fast!

I found that the Safari browser offered me the Cloud-Based versions of a few applications that I’d previously only been able to access via an iPhone app. Access to our SharePoint site and Online ticketing system was now as easy as browsing to the site and logging in… no need to “have an app for that” anymore! And, as expected, the Safari browser is still, shall I say, “Flash Challenged”.

As you may know, I have less than perfect eyes but love to read. While, the interface of the iBook reader is very cool… the bookstore had less of a selection than I’d expected. I proceeded to install the Kindle app and downloaded a few books. The page-turning action isn’t near as cool on the Kindle reader but they had the book I was looking for…

My connection to our Microsoft Exchange server worked beautifully over my Wi-Fi connection and I absolutely love the new calendaring interface – in both portrait and landscape mode!

I also installed the Microsoft Office equivalent versions from the App Store – “Pages” for Word, “Numbers” for Excel, and “Keynote” for PowerPoint. I expected formatting errors – and there were a few. A few fonts were missing, images shifted from their previous positions, etc. In the “Pages” app I brought up a 27-page .docx document and was pleasantly surprised. Most of the formatting was intact and the application seemed very usable.

The iPad offers tremendous potential for medical applications such as EMR/EHR and will probably pave the way for wide acceptance of tablet-computing. I’m sure I’ll discover a few more features and anomalies in the days and weeks that follow… (assuming I can pry it out of my daughters hands – “Super Monkey Ball” also works flawlessly!)… but, as of now, this is not the death of the laptop… at least not yet…
Promote blog