Walt Mossberg travels to Paris with iPad instead of laptop

I bought the iPad for college. I must say it does not fit it all. The most useful thing I aimed for is the ability to use Numbers for data acquisition and quick charts drawn right away. Unfortunately, there's no tendency line for scattered charts, and this is significantly important for those taking Physics or any other exact science.

Just spent 19 days in Asia and 7 more in Cuba, with a 64g iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard for use with My Writing Nook. Only headache was in a hotel that had Ethernet, but no WiFi, so I sprang $45 for a router that I gave to a local orphanage at trip's end. Worked great and wound up benefitting a great cause!

Will definitely leave the laptop home unless I'm working on big drafts. But I just bought Quickoffice too, so...who knows? In any case that laptop is going to last 2 years longer.

I went iPad-only at the recent VMworld. Great for taking notes at keynotes and talks. A little rough for blogging especially with embdded pictures, but otherwise a great weight saver.

I travel extensively on business. The iPad has so much potential as a notebook replacement, but at this moment there are some fundamental shortcomings. Working with email offline is painful. I believe I understand why the design of the mail app is as it is, but until I can reliably connect to the cloud when in the clouds, it is almost unusable. File management is another shortcoming. I enjoy the benefits of a more closed and carefully controlled system, but it presents challenges for the business user nonetheless. Having said all if this, I happily travel with both a notebook and my iPad, and by committing to a paperless workflow, am lighter than ever before. Bring on 4.2... And 4.3...

The iPad keyboard really needs arrow keys and an Apple key.

That would make it a much more workable solution for long documents, since the touch-screen select/edit functions are a bit wonky. If you could select by keyboard with shortcuts for cut/copy/paste and formatting, I'd use it all the time.

As an airline pilot, i like removing some 'kilograms' from my flightcase. The iPad is very promising and i tend to carry it instead of my 13"MBP now. BUT as a dad of two-less-than-two-years-old , i must admit that i miss rating and tagging my photos, or being able to create a real movie during layovers in hotels (the only place where i get two entire hours for me)... Steve, if you read me, WHY am i able to rate my music 'on the go' and create playlists, and not do the same with my photos ??... Maybe because you want to sell more macbooks ? ;-)

Took mine to Asia,
Tokyo, Seoul, and Busan. Tokyo was the only one with easy to access inter webs ^^. I carried an Airport express with me.That was the only drawback.

I had this thought when I first got my iPad: why did I have to carry my Macbook Pro when this clever little device did most of what I wanted to do while traveling. Well, Mossberg took on the task with vengeance and answered the question. Thank you Dr. Mossberg. You are still a great diagnostician!

Ever since I got my iPhone 4, I leave my laptop home on my short-term trips. So nice to be able to do 90% of what I need on 90% less bulk and worry.

I've done trips both a laptop, an iPad, and both. Here's a review I did:

http://holykaw.alltop.com/ipad-3g-vs-laptop-which-to-take-on-a-trip