Many users have an iPad at home and use it for leisure, but do not have a laptop . Now that telecommuting is the order of the day, a recurring question that people ask themselves is if you can get to use an iPad to work , instead of having to buy a laptop or desktop for it. In this article we are going to analyze the feasibility of using an iPad instead of a PC to work … is it viable?
It is true that Apple tablets are now more powerful than ever, and in fact the company wants to position them as work tools to replace laptops. Of course, if you are not a user with great needs, an iPad could work for you, but at the moment when you need more powerful editing programs or have a few applications running simultaneously, an iPad simply could not replace a PC.
So how do you know if an iPad is right for your job? Let’s see it.
The iPad to work, something viable or a utopia?
For many users, the PC or laptop is the primary means of surfing the Internet, entering Facebook or checking email. If this is your case, an iPad can definitely replace a PC because precisely these are the functions that it does best. In fact, with millions of applications available, surely there is an App that will help you do what you need to work, since all the main retailers have applications available.
The office suite
The problem comes when you need “advanced features”. Even though Apple has an office suite for its tablets, it does not have the power that the Office suite for PC has and, in other words, it does not have enough power (we talk about software here), neither the functionality nor the comfort that gives us a PC or a laptop for it. And we are no longer talking about Apple’s iWork suite, not even Microsoft‘s Office suite for iOS has the functionality of the PC version.
Imagine that you have to create a complex Excel calculation for the job. Yes, you can do it on the iPad, although the difficulty due to its manageability will surely extend the time it will take to make it. Then you have to save it in an accessible place to be able to send it by email. We repeat that it can be done, but it is that this task on a PC is a matter of clicking and dragging the document to the email and that’s it, without any complications. In other words … it is possible to do it, but it is not viable due to the time and the functionality that is lost.
Of course, you could buy a Bluetoot h keyboard and mouse to use with the iPad, as well as a stand to keep it vertical and as a monitor, but then how much money would you have invested in total? What laptop could you have bought for that money?
Multitasking is the key point
But the biggest drawback when using an iPad to work is found in multitasking. One of the things that is most needed when working is having multiple applications open simultaneously. For example, you can have Chrome open at the same time as Outlook while you watch a video on YouTube, and while it is true that you can relatively do the same on an iPad, the same objective is not reached in the same way.
In other words, with an iPad you can have the “multi-window” mode that allows you to see two applications at the same time on the screen, but this one is so small that you will hardly see anything in any of them. You can also have a small window at the same time (in Picture-in-picture mode) to watch the YouTube video, but again it would be so small that we would miss everything. In other words, by proxy you can, but achieving the goal leaves a lot to be desired.
An iPad can’t replace a PC to work
So far we have talked about functionality and comfort, terms in which an iPad certainly loses compared to a PC or laptop. But that’s not all: depending on the job, you probably need specific tools to work such as AutoCAD, MemoQ or other proprietary applications. And there the iPad not only does not have enough power to give adequate performance, but it also does not have these applications.
In other words, an iPad can be as basic as surfing the web or checking email, but when it comes to working, for most people it’s just not enough .
