I love the Apple iPad, it has been on my gadget want list since it was first launched earlier this year. The sleek design, long battery life, light weight and now familiar operating system it shares with the iPhone along with a myriad of applications makes it a very attractive device for those of us on the hoof or simply wanting a quick way to read documents, emails and ebooks on a screen bigger than 3”, let alone watching movies and playing games.

All this as a consumer device is great, but thinking about the business arena it does not let me leave my laptop and for that alone it has failed to move to the need list. It is the simple things such as:

  • Not allowing active content from websites which prohibit it being able to interact with a number of my clients systems
  • Not capable of being able to use WebEx, Live Meeting or Go To meeting to attend that last minute conference call that is arranged
  • You can edit Microsoft office documents but must send it to someone with a PC to ensure the styles and formatting is carried through
  • Poor support for Remote Desktop

Over the past year my trusty HP Touchsmart tablet PC running Windows 7 has served me well for these functions along with all the tasks the iPad would provide, except the weight of the device provides arm ache if used for reading as a tablet for more than 30 minutes or so.

At the recent EHI Live event we were fortunate to spend 2 days working with the new ZooStorm SL8  with Windows 7 pre-installed, this devise was a dream to operate and sports many of the benefits of the iPad, the slate has a sleek design, light weight and best of all runs a familiar operating system that will work without me having to compromise.

This hit the need list and I have one on pre-order to arrive at the launch in the beginning of this month. We’ll be putting it through its paces looking at how it handles being encrypted, how well it works with Microsoft Direct Access, interfacing with Web Apps and full fat Office applications along with how it can be supported in an enterprise running System Centre Configuration Manager.

I’ll share our experiences and thoughts on the new ZooStorm SL8 in a future edition of our eNewsletter.