That’s the question Paul Colligan will answer for small business owners over 30 days in his iPad experiment. Of course there’s a big difference between “can” and “should.” You can run your business in the cloud with Google Apps. They’ve got spread sheets, word docs, presentation and graphing tools, but the fact that you can do it is a long way from the question of “should” you do it.  What are the advantages and just as  important what are the disadvantages.   Google docs allow you to access your spreadsheets anywhere in the world as long as I have an Internet connection, but they also lack so much of the advanced functions of Excel that the trade of just might not be worth it. I see potential similar trade offs with the iPad.  Great it’s portable, but if you do most of your work from your desk, as most small business people still do, then what does it have to offer.

Even if you’re as mobile as Paul seems to be, why the iPad over any other mobile work device?  I am pretty sure that Paul will be able to run his business from an iPad for 30 days.  Will he want to do it long-term?  I am guessing the answer will be “no.”  The reason I’ll follow and you may also want to follow his iPad experiment is that in doing this he will be putting the iPad through the paces in a unique way.  At the end of the experiment, we  should have a much better idea of what the pros and cons of using an iPad are.  In fact, you may even want to put purchasing one off until you see Paul’s conclusions.

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