I do realise how lucky I am as my workplace have just bought me a 64GB Wifi+ 3G iPad 2. In the main this is because I spend a lot of time away from the office and out on the road and so it is incredibly useful for me to have a device which allows me to manage my email and calendar effectively.

At around £600 for the Wifi + 3G version this is by no means cheap and there are certainly cheaper tablets on the market - but what you get for that price tag is an incredibly slick, intuitive and responsive devise which is an absolute joy to use. I really cannot express how much easier this makes my working life and having the 3G means I am also not beholden to finding wifi spots, which is amazingly useful when I am in the car.

The iPad is astonishingly thin and light and this means that I can slip it into my handbag easily enough, I therefore feel safer carrying this than my full size laptop as it is far less conspicuous. As a female this matters a lot to me.

The touchscreen on this device is very accurate and easy to use, I find I can type as quickly on the
keyboard as I can on my laptop or a desktop and I rarely have problems hitting the wrong keys, it is amazing how accurate the touch screen is for this in particular. Answering emails properly and with a detailed response is made very easy by the iPad (although I have to say the iPhone is also brilliant for this).

I have become a proper iSheep over the last few months and now possess two iPhones (one work and one personal) and the iPad. One of the advantages of using both the iPad and the iPhone is that the iPad is second nature if you are used to the iPhone operating system and organisation structure (although I actually believe the iPad is so intuitive anyone could pick it up and figure it out pretty quickly).
For speed the iPad is, I believe, unbeatable. Browsing the internet on it is amazingly easy and fast and regardless of the number of tabs you have open it is consistently slick. In fact, in my house the laptop has become virtually redundant because it is just so much quicker and easier to pick up the (always ready to go) iPad.

Battery life is impressive on this device and although I use it for an hour or two every day I find it only needs charging a couple of times a week and it seems to hold the charge well if I have fully charged it and then do not touch it for a couple of days. It is also very useful that it uses the exact same charger as the iPhone so I only ever need to take one charger with me to conferences and the like.

You can probably tell I am a big fan of these devices but that is not to say they are perfect. Being Apple rather than Microsoft does have some limitations, for instance you cannot open/use Word, Excel or any other Microsoft documents and you also cannot use Adobe flash player, you can of course download apps which do this kind of thing for you but as many of the emails I am required to deal with have such documents attached it is a minor irritation not to just be able to use them fluidly.

The other niggle I have with the iPad is that there is no USB port so you cannot quickly and easily move or back up documents from it to an external drive. There is of course the iCloud (which is great) but it means you rely on a third party source looking after any such data you move to it. In terms of using the iCloud for photos and apps and music, this is a fabulous idea and I love that it synchronises remotely and enables you to access all of your items from any device linked to it.

In terms of the amount of apps available there literally is one for pretty much everything you can think of or possibly want. I use Evernote to take notes in meetings these days and the time it saves me by already having an electronic copy of what's gone on is very helpful. I do think having the 3G is worth the extra investment as you never actually need to faff about getting passwords for wifi at each place you visit. I do believe that although work have invested in this device for me they also get more out of me in non-work time as I am inclined to answer emails whenever I pick it up and respond more quickly regardless of whether or not I am at work. This could be seen as a negative but I actually find it somewhat reassuring that I rarely ventur e into the office without being fully appraised of what's going on.

In short, I do believe that as far as tablets go this is the best on the market and, as you would expect from Apple, it gets top marks for functionality, design, ease of use and speed. I cannot fault it as a support device for my job and I feel totally privileged to have one at my disposal. When I next replace my home laptop I will have to seriously consider whether or not to just buy one of these instead, it really is that good.