The iPad - Do You Really Need One?

Is an iPad a wise investment to suit your needs and also your business? For many, the $600 expense is more than worth every penny. The time saved and improved production quickly pays for itself. For other people, the $600 selling price is too steep for what may seem like just a high-tech toy.

Do you really need an iPad? Let's take a look.




==> What Is the Value of Your Time?

From a professional point of view, the iPad's job is basically to save time and increase production.

For example, if you are on a bus and take care of an email that will later have needed to be done when you are in front of a computer anyway, you've effectively "saved" the time that you required to spend doing the work later.

If your time is worth $20 an hour, the iPad would have to save you just 30 hours to pay for itself. If your time is valued at $100 an hour, it'll pay for itself in just six hours.

How can the iPad save you time and improve productiveness?

==> Writing Emails on the Go

The iPhone and the Blackberry are good for one-liner responses, but these are not best for composing long, comprehensive emails.
They're not best for looking through long, detailed emails either. They could have problems showing attachments like PDFs and are generally not good work-on-the-go tools.

The iPad however may be used both to read long email messages and to compose them. They are only a little tad slower compared to a fully-fledged keyboard, helping you to create long emails even on a bus or planes.

==> Read Documents, News and Books Anywhere

It is a hassle to carry books, documents and newspapers with you wherever you go. But the iPad is so light, yet can have all those in one.

The iPad provides apps that allows it to read PDFs, Excel files, Word files and just about every type of computer file. You can sign up to apps from almost every major newspaper, from the Wall Street Journal to USA Today.

Lastly, both the Kindle store and the Apple iBooks store have a myriad of books to choose from. You can literally take dozens or hundreds of books in your briefcase, all of it weighing less than two pounds.


==> Essential Internet Tasks

There are tons of stuff that you could do online in your down time that you simply would not be able to do if you didn't have an iPad.

Having an iPad is more easy than carrying a laptop around. Most of the people who own an iPad get in the habit of carrying it almost everywhere.

Must update a flight itinerary? You can. Want to verify a price against Amazon's price while you're inside the shop? You can. Want to book a baby sitter to watch the children while you spontaneously make plans with your spouse? You can.

The possibilities are endless.

Once again, what it all comes down to is time saved versus the $600 investment. Will it pay for itself? Do you really need an iPad? You be the judge.

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