A Month with an iPad?

I know at the end of the day what I am proposing will be very difficult to pull off. I’ve been using my new iPad since Saturday and while it is quite a remarkable device I am not sure it can really take the place of my trusty MacBook for all my mobile needs, but I am going to see. Starting today I am committing myself to the idea that I will only use my iPad when I am not at my desk. Crazy? Yep.

I have already bumped my head against some issues with this whole experiment but I think if I am going to be able to really understand the affordances of this platform I need to really live with it. I have some rules that I am going to try and live by:

• I will only use the iPad when I am away from my desk. That means when I am heading to meetings (most of my days) I can only use the iPad. When I am at my desk, the MacBook is fair game.
• What will this mean for my every day work I have no idea. So far the App Store is delivering new and useful apps to support workflow so I am relatively confident that it will get better as the month progresses. I will make sure I share thoughts on what might be making this possible.
• I’m not really sure what this means for me at home, but I’ve honestly not touched anything other than the iPad since it showed up on Saturday so I am confident I can live on it at home as well. I am going to try and do all my mobile computing on the ipad as well. That means I will still sync my photos with my Mac Mini and use it for managing the iPad, my iPhone, and run media in my family room. I’ll make sure I report on that as I go forward.
• When I travel it will be only with the iPad.

As of tonight that’s it … I will say if something at work explodes and I need to use the MacBook to deal with a fire then I will. I’ll also try and share thoughts along the way and report on apps that are supporting my ability to do my work. So we shall see if, at the end of April, if I can live a month on the iPad as my only mo lie computing device. If anyone else is doing something similar I’d love to hear about it.