Replacing windows laptop with iPad Pro/Air2, sensible move ?

My other half (teacher) currently uses a windows laptop for all her work stuff.
Mainly word docs, spreadsheets, PowerPoint etc. Plus web based email.

She hates the laptop (various reasons) and wants to buy Something new, likes the idea of a MacBook, as all our other stuff is Apple so it seems to make sense.

But I was thinking that possibly an iPad air2/Pro with a nice laptop style keyboard case would be a decent option too.

Has anyone done similar and found it works well, or any reason why it doesn’t ?

Cheers.

I have the iPad Pro with the keyboard and pencil.
There isn’t a single reason to ever consider a windows machine other than the price.
However to get one close to the performance and tech of the Pro is ££’s

Cheers. How do you find it integrates with other users (meaning docs created on windows machines)
Do you use it for “PowerPoint” presentations etc.

The thought of doing any protracted word, Excel or PowerPoint on a tablet sends shivers through me. Fine for occasional short bursts but would drive me mad to have to do anything remotely complex. All my experience is based on Android though so it maybe possible that Apple has something that doesn’t make this horrible.

with excel do you not need to be careful if your spreadsheet uses vba macros or add-ins?

How about a Surface Pro instead if there are compatibility issues? fab machines and super fast.

No! we have some ipads in work and they are a pita to seriously use for powerpoint/excel, any sort of laptop, mac or pc is much better (they were bought mainly for excel work in the lab, but they are never used for that )

if ms office stuff is all your using it for then paying the mac premium is pretty pointless imho

but if your sold on the mac thing then go for it

No issues with it tbh
Office 365 works fine on either and no difference at all to anything
The keyboard case is no different to the surface or many smaller laptops and the ability to switch from that to a quick tap on the screen is eas and fast.

spreadsheets

Get a laptop.

Just checked and indeed excel can’t run macros on an iPad. Similarly, my friends who used to give Excel training used macs but used bootcamp to run Excel under Windows on the mac

Unless you are very sure that your excel docs are only pure excel with nothing added I would be sticking with a windows machine, but nice one

Spreadsheet use is minimal to be honest.
She is a teacher so it’s more filling in data than complex stuff.

Other office quirk to be aware of is databases – in the MacOs/iOS MS Office iterations there is no Access or equivalent.

This may well be a non-issue.

Given the above stated this last bit is purely for information, but: Apparently Windows 10 will run on an iPad Pro through Parallels Access as of last summer, so once the Apple HW is owned, there’s no reason the MS environment can’t be taken advantage of if you really want to…

Why the iPad Pro really isn’t as fast as a laptop

Shirley a MS Surface seems a better choice as a replacement, if you want a more tablet orientated device, id assume they have more compatiblity with MS office?

Spreadsheet use is minimal to be honest.
She is a teacher so it’s more filling in data than complex stuff.

and that is the problem. Someone may have prepared a worksheet for them to fill in but then uses a macro to run some calculations. Eg. Our expense sheets have a button to make a pivottable refresh which is a macro. Of course in this case you can do it without the button but that is just one example

If it’s for school/work she needs to just run whatever the rest of the staff run.
In fact, she should use whatever the school give her to use.

By all means get an iPad Pro for everything other than her work.

If it’s for school/work she needs to just run whatever the rest of the staff run.
In fact, she should use whatever the school give her to use.

The rest of the staff use whatever they have. As she does.
She could use what the school give her, but everything seems to take longer when using pencils and A4 paper. 😉

Surely cost of replacement is a factor? It must be a pretty hard life, lots of moving around, opening, shutting, coffee, etc.

Cost of replacement is a factor, but (unlike me) she’s very good at looking after stuff. Her laptop is two years old, and even though she hates it, it looks brand new.

She hates the laptop (various reasons) and wants to buy Something new, likes the idea of a MacBook, as all our other stuff is Apple so it seems to make sense.

What does she hate and why will a Mac magically fix that? Knowing a lot of teachers I doubt the pic on the back of the screen will fix the real problems… Being incompatible with school tech will probably make it worse. What cloud based file system is the school using?

What does she hate and why will a Mac magically fix that?

A lot of what she dislikes is to do with windows 10 to be honest. But it’s not just that.
A lot of what she does is online through the school network, so done through a browser.
I have no idea if a mac would “fix” things to be honest. (But I’m pretty sure that what she will end up getting)

I’d just rather she bought an iPad (if it will do the same stuff) as it seems a lot cheaper and more versatile.

Wait until at least the end of the month, as there are rumours of new Pads coming soon, both Air and Pro, including a 10.5″ screen Pro that’s the same physical size as the current 9.5″, by reducing the actual borders around the screen.
My old iPad 3 is really struggling these days, plus I really want a machine I can use the Pencil on, for jotting down notes and sketching with, so I’m eagerly awaiting announcements of Shiny New Toys.
😀

as it seems a lot cheaper and more versatile.

Although not as cheap or versatile as a windows laptop 😈

Ask her to try a Surface Pro or perhaps a Macbook or Macbook Air for the thin and light. With full fat MacOS you’ll eliminate some issues you may run into with iOS.

Surface is a good shout actually.

Although not as cheap or versatile as a windows laptop

Windows laptop like she has, and hates ?
Very unlikely to happen 😉

It’s a MacBook or an iPad of some description I think.

The iPad and the Mac keyboard do work well but are limited by the number of KeyBoard shortcuts that work well. The combo really suffers because you’re constantly going between touching the iPad and using the Keyboard it just doesn’t really flow, I will occasionally will work on a Word document on the go but I only have it for the Adobe stuff using the pen.

The work you seem to want it for just shouts out buy another laptop (even if Apple have decided that nobody wants ports on their computers the twunts)

as the husband of a teacher ..

If the school uses Windows IT for their main system i GUARANTEE you will end up buying a windows laptop further down the line regardless of which shiny white apple koolaid you drink just now.

sacked off the apple eco system a couple of years back due to the crippling incompatibility with other systems at the wifes/my work.

If she’s using SIMS, it will be shit what ever platform she accesses it on.

(long suffering husband of a teacher with a shitty IT department).

Teaching her not to hate Windows 10 would be a good start.

If the school uses Windows IT for their main system i GUARANTEE you will end up buying a windows laptop further down the line regardless of which shiny white apple koolaid you drink just now.

Agree 100%
The iPad Pro is a far nicer machine, but that’s irrelevant.
She should be using the hardware that supports the tools used by the school.
There are unfortunately very few schools where this isn’t just a cheap Windows laptop.
And they should be providing it.
She should be free to supplement it with anything else she chooses, with her own money.
And an iPad Pro would be wonderful as that second device (her own device).

I’d stick with a Windows laptop personally if I were a teacher. My SiL is a teacher and they recently got a new Windows laptop that I had to get working with her school’s VPN (not sure if your school has such a facility but you’d have little hope of it working via an iPad).
Windows is fine as long as you start with a clean build, don’t click on random web-site links offering to speed it up or fix problems and ignore email attachments unless you’re sure it’s legitimate. Every couple of years just rebuild it (trivial these days now you can just save stuff in the cloud). Oh and get an SSD, nothing else comes close to improving overall system performance for the money.

Teaching her not to hate Windows 10 would be a good start.

She’s an experienced user, way more than I am, and she knows how to use it, she just doesn’t like it.
Opinions eh.

And they should be providing it.
She should be free to supplement it with anything else she chooses, with her own money.

I can’t disagree, but unfortunately they don’t, so just have to work with the situation as it is.

..VPN

Have tested access to the school network on my old iPad mini (ready for the scrap pile) and I can access it, but like everything else on it it’s very slow.

She’s an experienced user, way more than I am, and she knows how to use it, she just doesn’t like it.
Opinions eh.

Most experienced users I know just deal with the differences and realise that they are all basically the same. The haters are usually people who struggle to adapt.

The haters are usually people who struggle to adapt.

Or who have never tried something. FFS… trollgrips, mikewindowssmith and Cougar. Guaranteed to piss themselves on a Mac thread. Every. ****. Time.

I’d stick with Windows.

My kids often get sent home with homework that is just a link to a webpage and quite a few are a pain to run on the IPad ( flash based games etc) so I can only imagine that trying to get an iPad to work with a schools it system would be a royal pain.

Three_Fish – Member
The haters are usually people who struggle to adapt.
Or who have never tried something. FFS… trollgrips, mikewindowssmith and Cougar. Guaranteed to piss themselves on a Mac thread. Every. ****. Time.

Care to point out any factual problems there?
Given I spend about 8-10hrs of every working day on windows PC’s I guess I have an idea of what they are capable of. Answer is a lot more for your money than a mac, especially if you are using MS software. If you can’t say what about Win 10 annoys you then how do you know a mac will fix it? That one is the consultant question. You can’t fix what you don’t understand.
Finally being a teachers son, sharing a house with a teacher and knowing a lot more the OS is not the real issue…

Most experienced users I know just deal with the differences and realise that they are all basically the same. The haters are usually people who struggle to adapt.

I will pass on your helpful comments 🙄

If you can’t say what about Win 10 annoys you then how do you know a mac will fix it?

I can’t say specifically what it is she doesn’t like about win10, but I’m sure she could.

But that’s kind of irrelevant really, as she has made her mind up she wants a Mac, and that is what she will buy, such is life.

Which is why, my question was regarding the differences between buying a MacBook and an iPad Pro/Air
And wether an iPad would work as a substitute for a MacBook for her useage.

(Obviously half the responses said “buy a laptop” but that’s STW I suppose 🙂 )

My other half is a teacher. I’m a computer science graduate, and have developed software for everything from IBM mainframes to phones, now a web developer/designer flipping between OS and devices purely for testing. Nearly all my work is now done on Macs and iOS devices… but… a teacher needs access to Windows, unless they are working at a very enlightened school… which, if they’re not providing school hardware, your other half’s school is not. She needs a laptop, either a cheap Windows PC, or a Mac with a big enough SSD/disk to run multiple OS via virtual machines or dual booting.

As a personal device, she’ll enjoy using the iPad Pro far, far more. But wrong tool for her job, unfortunately.

but… a teacher needs access to Windows,

What is it that she won’t be able to do without a windows Laptop though ?

She’s been going through, showing me all the things she currently uses her laptop for, and so far I’m not seeing it ? 😕