Personal computing discussed

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codedivine
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Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 6:25 pm

Just curious. Anyone use tablets for anything productive? Or creative (like art, music) etc? If so, what use/app and what tablet?
What does not count: news reading, watching videos (even if educational), social networking, web browsing and email.

Note: Please keep this thread positive. Don't flame tablets in general, or particular OSes etc. Just state your use, app and tablet.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 6:47 pm

Two guys in a band I play in use their iPads along with these to clip the device to a microphone stand, and they use it for rehearsal charts. They're just using a PDF viewer app. I'd do the same if this sort of device existed for non-iPad tablets (and if my Kindle was 10"; 7" I think would be kinda small).

Looks like there's an adjustable clamp for other tablets available as well: http://www.probroadcastsupply.com/ac-ce ... cet-ez05a/

Not sure I'd want to drop $50 (after shipping) on it, though.
Last edited by derFunkenstein on Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mr. Bamboo Head
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:09 pm

uh my fiancee uses hers to view recipes in the kitchen :D
 
codedivine
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:44 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Two guys in a band I play in use their iPads along with these to clip the device to a microphone stand, and they use it for rehearsal charts. They're just using a PDF viewer app.


Cool! Interesting use!

Mr. Bamboo Head wrote:
uh my fiancee uses hers to view recipes in the kitchen :D


Still counts :D
 
SecretSquirrel
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 9:15 pm

codedivine wrote:
What does not count: news reading, watching videos (even if educational), social networking, web browsing and email.


Why not? I set my tablet on the console for my stationary bike and keep up with TR and /. et al while I am working out. It allows me to legitimately do two activities in parallel that I would have done serially in the past. That sounds like the definition of productivity to me.

As others have noted, I use mine for PDF reference a lot. Working on the car, electronics, airplanes, anything where I need a ready reference. It saves me printing stuff and is much less cumbersome than a laptop. My tablet has actually replaced my work laptop too. A bluetooth keyboard and Citrix are all I need to be able to work remotely in a pinch. Its not the same as a full blown laptop of course, but it is much easier to carry around.

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thegleek
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sat Feb 04, 2012 9:47 pm

SecretSquirrel wrote:
Citrix are all I need to be able to work remotely in a pinch.

They have a citrix client in the android market?! :o
 
SecretSquirrel
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sun Feb 05, 2012 9:30 am

thegleek wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
Citrix are all I need to be able to work remotely in a pinch.

They have a citrix client in the android market?! :o


Citrix Receiver. There are some requirements on which version of Citrix Secure Gateway you are running on the other end. I have had better luck with the beta version as it has some rather important features, like passing through he Ctrl key, that I need. Available on both the Google and Amazon markets.

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ChronoReverse
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:47 am

I use my Touchpad as a PDF viewer a lot. Whether it be for song sheets or for recipes.

I've also used it for a course once to carry around notes but that was forced because I had lent my laptop to my brother. Ended up having to type additions and correction into Evernote.

(As a sidenote, it'd be a ridiculously expensive way to replace a sheet of paper if it weren't for the firesale.)
 
Hance
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:57 pm

I went to the trouble of converting some forms from work to be editable PDF's for my iPad. My thinking was that it would be a huge time saver when I was on location doing an inspection. What I quickly found was that data entry on tablets is painfully slow even with the minimal amount of data I had to enter. I quickly went back to a clipboard with pen and paper.

On the positive side I keep a bunch of PDF manuals on the iPad and its extremely handy. I have some reference materials in PDF form that are almost 700 megs almost all of it text. Its a huge amount of documentation that I wouldn't normally be able to take with me everywhere I go.
 
ChronoReverse
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:28 pm

Yeah, I find that a tablet is great for viewing media of all sorts but the moment you try to enter information, it rather bogs down.

Perhaps one day Siri and similar tools will be powerful enough that this won't be an issue. I do wonder how well the Galaxy Tab and its stylus would work.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:39 pm

ChronoReverse wrote:
Yeah, I find that a tablet is great for viewing media of all sorts but the moment you try to enter information, it rather bogs down.

Perhaps one day Siri and similar tools will be powerful enough that this won't be an issue. I do wonder how well the Galaxy Tab and its stylus would work.

ICS voice recognition is pretty darn good. I can speak an email and then go back and tap on misunderstood words/punctuation and fix them. It's much less likely to misunderstand me on ICS than it did on Gingerbread
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Twittering away the day at @TVsBen
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Anyone use tablets for productivity/creativity?

Mon Feb 13, 2012 9:04 am

Back on the productivity train, on Friday I used this and the office iPad for a presentation:

MyPoint PowerPoint Remote.

It doesn't have a "native" iPad version so you have to hit the 2x button to zoom and it's pixelated, but it's free, and for what I needed it was more-or-less legible. If I were going to do this a lot, I'd probably go the paid app route.

To touch on something Hance said and I missed, having PDFs with you is way better than printed doc, if only because I prefer to search than flip through papers. And if the PDF documentation is laid out well that there's an index and a TOC, it's nice to browse them and have them link to right where I want to be.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Twittering away the day at @TVsBen

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