I’m going to write a bunch of articles about how I’m using my iPad and why I think it will be very useful to me.
One of the biggest reasons I wanted a tablet/pad like device was so I could use it as a reference tool. I have about 150 books sitting on my book shelves, and while useful at my desk, I really don’t want to carry them around the house or to the office with me.
I’ve built up a large collection of useful computer books in PDF format, but have never had a good way of reading them. My laptop and office computer only have the one video display so reading a PDF and working means switching back and forth between apps on a regular basis. My memory is nowhere near as good as it was 15 years ago so I’m switching a lot.
I thought the Sony eReader would be a good help since it can read PDF’s. Unfortunately, even on a 6″ display, the book was just unreadable in full page layout. I could go to landscape mode and read a half page at a time, but even then, it was rather small. Also, the eReader took almost twice as long to switch pages in a PDF as it does in a normal book. The Kindle DX would probably a better eInk device, but that’s not available to me.
Enter the iPad.
I’ve found about 5 applications on the iPad that can display PDF files wonderfully. A computer book in PDF format can be displayed with an entire page which is perfectly readable from a 2 or 3 foot distance. I can now carry my entire library around with me. Future versions of iBook are also going to display PDF files, though I don’t think the page turn metaphor they love is going to help any.
Applications that make it all work
The iPad alone doesn’t do much, it’s the applications that make the thing sing.
DropBox Storage
The first and most important application and web service you need to use is DropBox. DropBox is the most useful cloud based service created in the last three years! DropBox provides a synchronization service where a “My Dropbox” folder on your computer is replicated to all your other computers and to their server in the cloud. When you update a file on one computer, all your other computers get the update. When away from your computers, you can get at your files from their web site after signing in.
DropBox has created applications for a variety of mobile devices including the Apple suite and Android devices. So, from the iPad, I can get access to all my files stored on the DropBox folder. The DropBox app downloads the file on request and loads it up into a viewer application. There are viewers for Office 2003 and 2007 files, PDFs, images of many times, video files, and MP3 files.
DropBox is also getting itself supported in many other applications. Good Reader is capable of connecting to the DropBox service to let you access files. Good Reader also has a PDF display viewer which is pretty nice to use. Another application is Documents 2 Go. Documents 2 Go actually allows you to edit Office 2003 and 2007 files on the iPhone/iPad. It can now download the files from DropBox, let you edit them, and then send them back up again. Documents 2 go also displays PDF files, although with a very crappy interface. With these apps, there is no reason to purchase the Mac compatible apps of Pages or Numbers.
Locally stored content
Another application that is awesome is Air Sharing HD. This app actually turns your iPad into a Bonjour or WebDAV server. When running, you can map a drive to your iPad directly from your computer and copy all your documents and other files onto it. I don’t believe it allows editing of the files like Documents 2 Go, but it does have the absolutely best PDF reader of the bunch. It’s extremely fast even on 50 MB PDF files, remembers where you were, and scrolls fast. The only downside is that the PDF’s must all be stored on the iPad as opposed to being requested on demand from DropBox.
Notes
In the PC world, my absolute favorite application for notes is Microsoft OneNote. Unfortunately, that’s never going to appear on the iPad so I had to look for other solutions. I found EverNote.
EverNote is another cloud based service that lets you create notes and synchronize them to many devices. There is a web interface, a Windows and Mac application, and mobile applications for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. I can use the EverNote application on my Android phone to take photographs and have it post them into the EverNote database. I can then view them on any of the devices.
EverNote is NOT OneNote however so there is a large loss of functionality. EverNote uses a group of note book repositories, along with tags to organize the notes. I can probably live with this, but the Windows app has the WORST GUI interface ever. The text editor is beyond useless on Windows and the web version isn’t much better. They forget simple things like sorting notes by title on some devices, or by grouping by tags or notebooks. They assume you will use the search box for finding your notes all the time. Search sucks on a mobile device.
But, the point is, it works today and I can only assume that it will get better. It does support the ability to encrypt your text in notes so you can store sensitive information. You have to type your password to decrypt it before seeing the text. Thankfully, both Android and iPad support this.
Well, that’s enough for today. Next article will be on books.