How are you using your iPad at work?

[blg123]

I love my new iPad 3G. Now I am trying to find the best ways to use it at work. Currently, I carry a spiral notebook to take notes in meetings and keep track of action items. I tend to use post-it notes on my desk to keep track of to-do's. We use Office/Exchange at work and won't be able to connect to it on my iPad due to security concerns. We use blackberries for mobile email.

I have Penultimate on my iPad, but I haven't found a good stylus to replace my pen/notepad that I use to take notes in meetings.

Any suggestions you have that will make me MORE productive at work with my iPad would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[ScottFitz]

I can't comment on your corporate difficulties as I've worked for large companies before with draconian computer policies. It sucks. Mostly because the IT guys where I worked were too closed minded about Apple and didn't want to have to learn anything new.

I'm using logmein to get back to my imac that is on my office desk. From there, I'm able to run our customer database software package, SalesLogix. I can issue quotes, etc from the imac.

I've only had my 3G for a few days. i anticipate using it for powerpoint training sessions (really need a remote, have to use the bluetooth kb until a remote solution comes out). That's about it.

I travel extensively, but the vast amount of my computer time when I'm traveling is for entertainment purposes. I'm in hotels and bored out of my mind. Drinking heavily and chasing women are not options, so I surf the net exhaustively.

 

[AcesOverKings]

I love my new iPad 3G. Now I am trying to find the best ways to use it at work. Currently, I carry a spiral notebook to take notes in meetings and keep track of action items. I tend to use post-it notes on my desk to keep track of to-do's. We use Office/Exchange at work and won't be able to connect to it on my iPad due to security concerns. We use blackberries for mobile email.

I have Penultimate on my iPad, but I haven't found a good stylus to replace my pen/notepad that I use to take notes in meetings.

Any suggestions you have that will make me MORE productive at work with my iPad would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Same general scenario here. I'm going to try replacing my black leather 3-ring organizer (my co-workers joke about my "Trapper Keeper") with the iPad. While I'm aware I'll just be trading one form of good-natured ribbing for another, Evernote is the app that just might be cool enough to make it work.

Evernote is a free app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, etc. If you take notes or a photo in one place, it syncs to the cloud and is accessible from all of them. It allows you to title, tag (killer), and organize notes into separate notebooks. I have two general notebooks: work and home.

Also, if you have a camera-phone capable of the evernote app (iphone, android, maybe Blackberry?), you can snap a photo of a typed page (memo, handout, business card, etc.) and not only will it save it as a note, but the Evernote server will run optical character recognition on the document and its contents become searchable.

Today's my first day with the iPad in the office, but I've been systematically ridding myself of paper by scanning all my old notes and sending them up to the cloud for a few weeks, so it was fairly smooth transition.

I think the rate-limiting factor will be how efficient my touch-screen typing abilities are. I imagine that, like the iphone, they will improve dramatically with time. It may be awkward in those first few meetings when I'm just hammering away on the backspace key the whole time.

Anyway, check out Evernote. No storage limit, but for the free account they cap your monthly data transfers at something like 50MB. I bought a year of premium service thinking my first couple months would be way over the limit as I integrated all of the papers cluttering my desk. Not so -- I could've stayed on the free plan.

I also use ReaddleDocs as a repository for a huge library of PDFs, and LogMeIn Ignition so I can leave my work laptop at work and access it from my ipad, iphone, or personal laptop. Last is Wolfram Alpha, which I use periodically to solve or plot solutions. Pages / Numbers to be able to open spreadsheets, but I can't tell you that these are better than the MS Office solutions out there (Documents2Go, etc.) because I just don't know.

Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

 

[blg123]

Thanks very much. I have most of the apps you listed except for Evernote. I've heard about it in the past and will try it out. Today, I tried to use Penultimate for the first time in a meeting, and it was extremely awkward writing notes with my finger. Even with a stylus, it will be tough for me as you can't rest your wrist on the iPad. If they could solve the stylus and wrist problem, I'd be happy with Penultimate. Not crazy about the idea of typing notes into my iPad during a meeting - some attendees really get turned off by someone pecking away while they're speaking - handwriting notes doesn't have the same effect.

EDIT: Just downloaded Simplenote and am trying it out. It wirelessly syncs to a web app, and changes can be made on both sides. Does Evernote do that? In a lot of the reviews I'm reading about Evernote for iPad, the reviewers are saying it crashes a lot. Any thoughts on that?

 

[PhoneI]

I use evernote taking meeting notes. I have an apple wireless keyboard that I pair up during the meetings for quicker input.

I use Things for task management. It has completely eliminated my filofax which I used constantly. Being able to sync my tasks between my MacBook, iPhone, and iPad is awesome.

I also scan a lot of documents to PDF then use GoodReader to view them on my iPad.

Debating whether to purchase Numbers or wait for Documents to Go. I am big on spreadsheets.

 

[blg123]

Anyone else have experience with Evernote? Will it sync wirelessly (over Wifi or 3G) to a web service? I'd prefer to not have to buy/install software on my work PC or my home Mac - prefer to update via the cloud.

 

[jimboutilier]

Anyone else have experience with Evernote? Will it sync wirelessly (over Wifi or 3G) to a web service? I'd prefer to not have to buy/install software on my work PC or my home Mac - prefer to update via the cloud.

All the Evernote programs (Mac, pc, iPad, iPhone etc) sync to an online account. Your online account is free or paid depending on the feature set you want. All your notes are also available via a web interface online. Right now the iPad version does not support creating or editing rich text notes so you are currently limited to plain text notes (can view other note types though).

I'm just starting to integrate my iPad into work. Right now I take it rather than a laptop to most meetings but some meetings still require a laptop as there are a lot of gaps in iPad functionality so far.