(Reposted from the Social3i Consulting blog.)

I’m not necessarily a gadget guy. I like the toys, but I’m generally towards the tail end of the early adopters. For me to spend a lot of money on something, it needs to be good enough to justify replacing the time and energy I’ve already invested on something else.

I usually get pushed over the edge when I see that someone I respect has adopted the technology into their everyday life. So a few weeks ago, after I watched one of our clients taking notes on his slick little tablet, I went forth and joined the iPad nation. 

 Here are some notes now that I’m two weeks in:

• Super solid notetaking device. Easier and less intrusive than a laptop. Easy to share notes with everyone in the room.
• Love Keynote. Easy to make presentations on the fly. In fact, I was even able to build a quick soccer field in order to diagram some plays and show my youth team the starting lineup and subs.
• Love Flipbook. Super cool app for turning my Twitter and Facebook feeds into a mini-magazine.
• Haven’t downloaded spreadsheet apps yet. This is a glaring hole so far, as I’d love to quickly run numbers.
• Netflix is fantastic. It’s the easiest way I’ve ever seen for me to just quickly turn on a device and catch up on whatever series I happen to be watching all the way thru.
• Also, when I’m at my desk I find myself just using it for monitoring email and Pandora, so I don’t have to bother with having it open on my desktop. 

I haven’t really gotten into games or anything yet. Also, I can’t say I use the browser or email any differently that I’d use my iPhone, so that’s not a real differentiator. And I’m just starting to get into the speech recognition stuff, but I haven’t really nailed that yet.

 Overall, it feels like there’s a decent learning curve between making the device a really cool photo album and a fully functional work device. More to come.