As I packed for my second trip to Lancaster (for yet another game convention) I came *this close* (see how far apart my hands are?) to leaving behind my laptop. Thanks to the iPad, I can very nearly do everything I need to do while away from home. There's just a few things that trip me up.
One is PDF reading. Sure, the iPad reads most PDFs just fine. But I regularly get PDFs with annotations in them. Even though Preview on the Mac handles these files pretty well, for some reason the iPad and iPhone don't – the annotations just don't show up. It doesn't matter what program you use to read them, either, because they all use the built-in iOS frameworks.
Next is connecting up with work (I know, I'm on vacation, but it appears I am invaluable at times – just not raise time<g>). I can connect up OK, but trying to manipulate a lot of text, especially with cut, copy and paste, without an actual mouse, is pretty difficult. I've tried a few different programs for remote control, and none of them are quite as easy to use as I need. It seems to take a lot of time to get things done without an actual mouse (and yes, the machines at work are Windows-based – just try running Windows natively without a mouse to see how tough that can be).
Printing is pretty-well solved, although it can require jumping through some hoops. Still, the overall functionality of the iPad is *so close* I can almost taste it. Maybe I can practice a bit more with the mouse movements…
Anybody out there been able to replace their laptop, even for a short time, with an iPad? If not, what roadblocks do you have?
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I got my ipad instead of a new MacBook Pro. The only thing I miss is being able to play CD/DVDs. I don’t need the horsepower for doing video on the go (I can wait ’til I get home), but I do admit being able to play Flash on some sites would be nice.