[NewChief]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

You know... I've thought the same for quite some time. Work gave me an iPad so that I could support it for our users, and when my boss asked me what I use it most for, I straight up told him for entertainment. Cause that's true by a huge margin. But I'm still quite surprised by the number of tablets requested by our educational institution since the tablet craze started. I support a university, and we've had floods of requests for tablets by quite a few different departments. The nursing/pharma/dental schools have been just gobbling up tablets, both iPad and Android, like you wouldn't believe. We've been ordering them by quantities of 20-30 at a time. Other departments like Theater, music, com studies have bought quite a bit as well. I never thought I would see it used academically to the level it is.

And let me tell you, it's been very difficult to support. Mainly for the iPads and the way they're tied to a specific iTunes account for software. We have university owned iPads, in which the users want to load their own apps per personal iTunes accounts. Creates for a nightmare. Android tablets are infinitely easier to manage in an enterprise environment.

But we have users using tablets quite a bit for things I never expected. Some professors take iPads to class, and connect them to overhead projectors with the iPad HDMI connector, and give presentations and such that way. Users will VPN into the campus network from home, and RDP into their work computers, and edit Word documents from their tablets at home. Both iOS and Android. We have many virtual applications available for users, such as the M$ Office Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, statistics programs, etc. All available for users virtually. And they're available per tablet. Which is really cool.

Anyway, I'm rambling. But tablet use has really surprised me in that regard.

They're the craze at our public schools as well... but for kids to use them. Every classroom wants an iPad or two for their kids to use. I'm on the technology committee that is putting together a tech request package for the coming years, and people are kicking around purchasing iPads/tablets/netbooks for every kid (with textbook funds and getting rid of textbooks, which most people don't actually use to any great extent). I'm not sure what direction to go with that. As you said, the iPad is a nightmare for management due to the one pad to iTunes account, so I don't think I'll be pushing to go in that direction unless there is a significant change in the way that all works. Maybe the Fire. Maybe some type of thin client laptop or netbook.