Maybe Steve Jobs was onto something when he said it was magical… So I finally joined the party and got an iPad. I decided to wait until the hysteria had died down figuring I could just stroll into any store and pick one up. Not the case, took me an extra two weeks to find one.

So which version did I grab? The choice for me was the one that is 3G enabled Wi-Fi 64GB for $829. I currently don’t have the 3G plans mainly because of AT&T and I already use the iPhone which can pick up when the iPad can’t. Most of the areas I’m around have free Wi-Fi access and with Minneapolis just recently announcing 100 free hot spots available in the coming weeks, problem solved.

And let’s face it, I’m not going to go lay in a park for the afternoon so 3G isn’t an issue. My set up at home will remain a desktop.

I can sync everything across multiple computers along with iPhone/iPad. The iPad won’t eliminate everything, but it might come close. It will help me be more efficient allowing me to continue to be a better service to my clients (and having fun with a magnificent device along the way). I just hope the commercial real estate industry gets on board with innovation. Most of it has been years behind.

The iPad Apps So Far

I haven’t even begun to dig into the “App Store” and this is what makes it fun. What I have on the screen is listed below.

• Dropbox for being able to store documents in the cloud and being able to pull them up on the iPad at the push of a button. If you are interested in Dropbox, use this link. You will get a extra free 250MB of storage and so will I. There are free and paid plans, but it doesn’t hurt to get some extra storage.
• Evernote Not sure what I’m going to continue to use Evernote for. Dropbox took over the main function of document storage. But nevertheless one of my fav iPhone apps. It’s a good way to save email, PDFs, voice memos, web clips… just about anything.
• Email I use use Google Apps for my hosted website about Twin Cities Real Estate and use the Microsoft Exchange for my work email (I have a love/hate relationship with Outlook, mainly hate so the farther I can stay away from that the better). I can manage multiple accounts with the movement of a finger.
• iannotate is Apple’s PDF program. View and markup PDFs. Also get signatures, good-bye paper.
• Keynote is Apple’s version of powerpoint. This I will use for client presentations.
• Pages is Apple’s version of word.
• Numbers is Apple’s version of excel. Used for numbers, what else?
• Osfoora HD had to throw this one in. By far the best Twitter client yet.

I’m currently waiting for Loopnet to launch their iPad app. They hit a home run with their iPhone app, by far the best way to search for property. Sadly it’s better than most desktop searches.

Everything is accessible within 20 seconds. It can’t do everything… yet. Multitasking is what will really get this device going. And I haven’t even had the time to even touch on the possibilities.

If you have an iPad, how do you like/use it so far? Any can’t miss apps out there that I need to know about?

Make sure to check back as I’ll be adding more and more about how I’m using it in my commercial real estate business.