First off a little background, other than a first generation iPod nano I have never purchased any apple products, in fact I even uninstalled iTunes and used 3rd party software to sync with windows media player. It would be a fair statement that I have not been Apple friendly. 

I pre-ordered my iPad the day it became available on the web, I bought the 32GB model, a dock, and the apple case.  The day the iPad was to arrive I sat by my front window and waited for the UPS guy to show up…I even took a picture of him as he was walking up to my front door.

My role of a Solutions Architect at Lewan is one where I spend a fair amount of time taking notes, from webcasts, vendors, training, customers…I deal with a lot of data. In the past I’ve used numerous methods to stay on top of it all: blog posts, rss readers, Twitter, and my least favorite…paper notes in a very nice leather…but heavy, notebook.  Enter the iPad…since the iPad arrived I now take most of my notes on the iPad, I check most of my RSS feeds and twitter via the iPad and usually from the comfort of my couch while browsing thru the channels on TV.  I do much more consumption of data on the iPad, my laptop is still my preference for creating new data and large amounts of typing.  Sure, people say it’s just a different form factor than a laptop, but that makes all the difference.  My fiancée didn’t understand why I needed an iPad either and why I wouldn’t just use my laptop…now I have to hide it to keep her off it.

There is just something wrong about using a laptop with the screen opened up in front of a customer…it seems unfriendly, so I’ve always used paper.  At home the portability of the iPad means I take it in every room I go in to.  The instant on is certainly better than sleep or hibernate on a laptop.

My favorite apps?  Evernote, Twitterrific, GoodReader, Citrix Receiver, NewsRack, Sonos, and Netflix!  The biggest enabler of the applications I use is their ability to store their configuration online so that moving between devices is seamless.

I think our view of the cloud may be a little fuzzy, at least for now. What the cloud has done for me is made irrelevant the device I use, whether a windows pc, my phone, or my iPad, my data and applications that I use are all there at my fingertips…after all, that is the only value we in IT really hold…applications and data, everything else is waste.

My next purchase for the iPad…a 3G one.  It turns out the iPad has changed my life so much I NEED it to be connected to the internet (and my data) from everywhere.  Maybe at the end of May I can post another blog post about my first month with the iPad 3G.  I heart you iPad…I’m even considering a MacBook now…yikes!

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