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In this feature, we'll share our personal experience of using tablets to be genuinely productive, not just for consuming media. These experiences have been gained not only from our day-long experiment, but from using tablets over the past couple of years. We'll reveal what works, what doesn't, and how to get around the various roadblocks created by tablet hardware. We've also included our pick of tablet apps, to help you turn your device from toy to tool, be it Android or iOS.
Running Web Applications
The continued shift towards working in web applications is what made it possible for us to carry on producing our magazine for the day without our PCs {well, almost without our PCs). Our website is, of course, managed via an online CMS. and we can share and edit documents online in services such as Google Docs. And publishing is far from the only industry shifting to a browser-based workflow.
Yet, many web apps are still designed primarily for PC web browsers, We found it impossible to upload photos to articles in our web CMS because the tablet browsers we were using didn't permit access to the device's file system. We expected such restrictions on the iPad, but even on Android tablets, which expose the file system far more readily, our web CMS wouldn't let us upload files. Likewise, when the Android tablet users attempted to access blogging platform WordPress via the browser, they found they couldn't perform tasks they take for granted on the PC, such as resizing text-entry boxes. A warning for tablet users then: just because you have a browser window, don't assume your web applications will just work.
Nonetheless, we still just about managed to get the job done. We edited features in Google Docs, albeit at a slower pace than we would have using Word on a PC. We had to work around a few idiosyncrasies: the down cursor on our iPad keyboard allowed us to move between lines in a paragraph, but not from one paragraph to the next, for example. Several familiar keyboard shortcuts don't translate to tablets and web apps. And there was a noticeable and irritating delay between keystrokes and the words appearing onscreen. It's nothing close to a showstopper, though.
Keyboards
We equipped our team with a variety of Bluetooth keyboards and docks at the start of the day - although there was some internal argument over whether this was "cheating". At the end of the day, external keyboard/ docks aren't terribly expensive and often come as part of a quality tablet case, such as Kensington's Keyfolio range, and we reasoned that anyone serious about working on a tablet would likely invest in a keyboard.
Despite this, some people found onscreen keyboards preferable, and one team member succeeded in bashing out a 660-word review without, as he put it, "uttering a single swear word".
For those who couldn't countenance working with a software keyboard, it does pay to choose an external Bluetooth keyboard carefully. Some have dedicated shortcut buttons that make it possible to perform common tasks - such as cut, copy and paste -without having to lift a finger to dab the screen. Some of the combined dock/keyboard cases position the tablet screen almost perpendicular to the keyboard, forcing you to slouch back in your chair to see the screen. Also bear in mind that Bluetooth keyboards require a source of power (either via built-in rechargeable or alkaline batteries), and usually can't be powered by the tablet itself.
Multitasking
Without doubt, the biggest bugbear for the team on tablet day was the difficulty of multitasking. We're used to working with two or three monitors on our desks, often with dozens of windows open simultaneously. Although the iPad and Android tablets both boast of "multitasking", you're effectively forced to work in a single, full-screen application window at any one time. Even with an HDM1 output to a desktop monitor, you can only mirror the tablet screen - not extend the desktop to display more than one app at once. By the end of the day, we were definitely seeing the appeal of Windows 8 split-screen Metro interface, will allow users to devote two-thirds of the screen to one application and a third to another.
Even using the tablets' limited multitasking capabilities was fraught with risk. On numerous occasions, users switched away from whatever they'd been writing or editing, only to find that the app has completely disappeared from the recent apps list, resulting in a loss of work on three or four occasions.
Forcing users to focus purely on a single task can have its advantages.however. It can. for example, help minimize distractions. Instead of having one's attention diverted by an incoming email, a meeting request or the latest Twitter meme, you can focus purely on the task at hand. This almost certainly results in the job being completed more quickly than it would if you were sat in front of a regular laptop and external monitor setup, with several windows open simultaneously. True, it's possible to simply shut out all possible distractions on a PC, but the single app focus of the tablet eliminates the temptation to keep that Outlook window open or TweetDeck session running on a secondary screen.
Networking
After multitasking, the second biggest hurdle the team faced on tablet day was accessing the company network. Most companies shares files between its teams via shared folders on a local server, but shared drives for networked homes with multiple users are becoming more and more common. Accessing servers, however, can be far from simple on a tablet. In our scenario, those running iPads couldn't find any way to connect to the server, although the Android users eventually found a way to tunnel through via the ES File Explorer and Astro File Manager apps. The experience wasn't seamless, though: many tablet apps refuse to work properly with anything other than files stored locally.
"Working on files from the server is fiddly," said one of the Labs team. "I've resorted to copying files to local storage first, then copying them back after the final edit, after yet another document vanished into thin air 1 had opened a file successfully direct from the server, and seemingly saved it. Yet when 1 returned to check the original location, no changes had been made."
Our savior, as it turned out, was Dropbox. The file-synchronization service is a long-standing office favorite, not least because it allows both Mac and PC users to share files without fuss. Now, we can add tablets to that list. Many iOS and Android applications are Dropbox compatible, allowing you to drag down a file from the cloud, make edits on the tablet, and then upload the changes, which are then synchronized across all computers that have access to that shared Dropbox folder.
Printing
With no direct access to the networked office laser and no Apple AirPrint-compatible printer to hand, we didn't hold out much hope of being able to make hard copies of work, but we were wrong. Google came to the rescue here.
Google's Cloud Print service allows users to print remotely from their tablets and smartphones, via Google Docs or compatible third-party apps. There are a couple of catches: first, this has to be set up using the Google Chrome browser on the PC, which means that the PC has to be switched on and logged in for prints to be successful. Second, there's precious little app support for Google Cloud Print on iOS, meaning text has to be pasted into Google Docs before printing. The Android users were more successful in this regard, using the third-party Cloud Print to send prints directly to the services from within apps.
Access to office email was largely a non-issue. Both Android and iOS's built-in mail clients offer decent support for the Microsoft Exchange accounts we use and once the correct settings had been established, it was plain sailing, Features such as the auto-completion of in-house email addresses were still available via the tablet clients, although some advanced Exchange features, such as automatic meeting scheduling and checking the availability of meeting rooms, weren't available.
The biggest barrier was search: on iOS we frequently found ourselves having to search email archives via the server, but this proved prohibitively slow - it certainly couldn't match the speed or advanced search features available within the Outlook desktop client. Android users, with no search facility at all in the built-in Exchange client, had to resort to using a trial version of the excellent third-party app. Touchdown HD
Conclusion
In many ways, our day-long test put an unfair burden on tablets. They're primarily mobile devices running adapted versions of smartphone OSes, and aren't intended to replace a PC in an office environment. That said, as the comments on our live blog testify, many companies are thinking about rolling out tablets to do just that.
While none of the team would willingly swap a regular PC for a tablet at this stage, we were quietly impressed with how much we managed to achieve. There were teething problems and we were forced back to Windows to complete a few tasks, but by and large we got through a working day without anyone being sent for stress counseling.
Our limited test might even change the way we work. Our Labs team, for example, found entering details into formulae-laden spreadsheets on a tablet was easier than expected. Writing copy using an external keyboard - or even with the onscreen one - was faster than we imagined, and much less distracting. And sharing files using services such as Dropbox was remarkably painless.
Choose the right apps and the right accessories, and it's most certainly possible to be remarkable efficient and productive on a tablet. It's a device that's totally silent, works anywhere, and most likely boasts much longer battery life than your regular laptop. The tablet can't compete with a full-blown PC for power, multitasking or regular desktop duties, but it is a flexible companion and one that's perfect for organizing your life.
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