Apple Ipad

[Gaffers01]

Anyone have experience of using an ipad air as a MFD technicians computer rather than a laptop?

We have had a few complaint of engineers laptops being heavy to carry around and does seem a legitimate issue when ive looked at it and just wondered if anyone has had any issues with using them.

There are a few ipad airs coming back from a school account that we have lost and am thinking about using these instead.

[copier tech]

Depends what manufactures you work on.

You can get small laptops about the same size as an ipad.

If you work on Ricoh it is useful to have an SD port or if you work on Canon you'll need a Windows laptop to install the SST.

Also the ipads don't have USB ports so the engineers won't be able to copy firmware to a USB pen ?

[slimslob]

It all depends on the size of available file st0orage on the iPad. Some like possibly those school ones have as little as 65GB. That us not much went you consider that my Ricoh folder has nearly 43GB.

[ihatefinishers13]

5 years ago we were contemplating it, and it wasn't bad. But for Kyocera, we weren't able to use their service portal because at the time it was only set up to be able to use it on Internet Explorer. Also, transferring files to USB required the adapter(not a big deal), but unzipping/extracting files to a USB wasn't simple. Another issue was it was difficult to setup a lan connection directly into a device to prove it wasn't the machine's fault. Now, they might have simple solutions for all of these issues, but at the end of the day, nobody is forcing me into an iPad, so i'll still with my windows laptop. We also have the Microsoft Surfaces for some users, which we might end up switching to.

[slimslob]

We have had a few complaint of engineers laptops being heavy to carry around

Any tech that finds a Windows laptop too heavy needs to find a different job. Get a carry case with a shoulder strap.

[rthonpm]

Any tech that finds a Windows laptop too heavy needs to find a different job. Get a carry case with a shoulder strap.

Unless the company is providing them with 17" behemoth laptops more suited as desktop replacements than as a truly mobile device. I've used an X Series Thinkpad as my toolbag machine for years now: small footprint and light weight.

[Hart]

14" is the sweet spot for me, light enough to tolerate it with the rest of the tools, and I can still see shit on the screen.

[tsbservice]

Any tech that finds a Windows laptop too heavy needs to find a different job. Get a carry case with a shoulder strap.

My head is my laptop
Seriously for daily use I don't need laptop unless I should prove problem lies in customer's network.
However I need on daily basis my thumb flash drives with firmware and made sure they are latest regularly. Some manuals are too on flash drives and my smart phone is always with good connection to service sites.
That works about 99% of time for me.
I do plan what have to do on site always before we left office.

[Saturn]

Any tech that finds a Windows laptop too heavy needs to find a different job. Get a carry case with a shoulder strap.

These techs probably don't remember the days when we drove around with boxes full of service manuals and parts catalogs.

[Samanator]

Not only boxes of service and parts manuals, but having to carry the manuals and your tools and vac and anything else one might need in one trip. I was younger then and didn't know to complain.