My iPad

I was brought up with mainframe computers and punched cards and later was a proud user of an IBM PC operating under MS-DOS loaded from two floppy disk units. My heart, however, always belonged to the small stuff.

I was fascinated by the HP35 and its Reversed Polish Notation. Later I went the whole way through programming the HP41CX synthetically and even contributed to HP's program library. The HP100LX fascinated me for years. Eventually, my pocket computers amalgamated with my cellular phone, so I carried around rather sophisticated Pocket PCs containing all my personal information. A positive side effect was that the PPC could also place phone calls. However, the text input facilities of these machines were rather cumbersome, with micro keyboards not helping when taking notes, e.g., in libraries. So I settled for an HP200, changing it later to the HP720 model for my external text work.

Me and my Jornada 720 (©Wikipedia)

The problem with all these small devices was synchronization. ActiveSync, offered by Microsoft for transferring data between my mini stuff and the desktop computer, always was a pain in the neck. I often spent hours determining why the machines did not want to mate. Should I have instead bought a netbook for my text processing needs and used USB sticks for data transfer?

Enter the iPhone: Regarding my personal data, Apple initially didn't facilitate synchronization between the phone and the desktop. While addresses are always synced fairly via iTunes, my agenda in Pocket Informant only recently worked reasonably well with MS Outlook following some real nightmares. For my other data (i.e., frequently needed alphanumerical information), PhatNotes issued their version for the iPhone just in time, so all my other data stay safely synchronized in a shared database.

But what about text files and all the other stuff? Enter the Cloud and the iPad: Apple offers MobileMe with an iDisk in a cloud where you can store all the files you are currently working on. No hassle anymore about which of the two files on your small machine or desktop PC is the most recent. You only work on the one and only version on your iPad and your desktop. Apple sells Pages for the iPad as a text processor, but strangely, this software doesn't presently give access to the MobileMe Cloud. Hence, for the time being, I use Quickoffice on the iPad. It supports MS data formats and fulfills all my external text processing needs, even when working on longer documents.

Do I have to open the word processor for small notes and odd information on the road? Enters the best application so far for iPhone and iPad: Evernote. You open Evernote on one of the iMachines or your desktop and enter text snippets or pictures. These entries instantaneously are available on all platforms, provided you are connected to the Internet.

The iPad is the ideal machine for Red Baron when away from the desktop. E-mail, news, and Wikipedia on the Internet are all in my hands. I have no time to watch films or play games, but other people seem to find their fill with the iPad.
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