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Tablets are all the rage these days. These popular devices power up in a split second and are perfect for reading, keeping up with social media and surfing the Internet. Yet bringing a tablet along with a laptop adds noticeably to your travelling burden and negates the sheer portability of the tablet in the first place.
Assuming you don't do computer-aided design or other intensive media-processing work, why not just leave the laptop at home and use a tablet? Below are some considerations if you're looking to deploy an Android tablet for more productive work.
Set Up Your Android Tablet for Work
The first step to setting up your tablet for work it to get your email, calendar and contacts properly synchronized. Fortunately, you need to do this only once, and it's a relatively straightforward process. This typically entails setting up accounts in the form of a Gmail account, LDAP or Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), as well as more traditional email systems such as POP and IMAP servers.
The situation for productivity documents is slightly more complex, mainly because there are so many options available. You can manually load work documents over a USB connection or, if the tablet is equipped with an SD card slot, copy them onto a SD memory card. Cloud storage services such as Dropbox or SugarSync can keep work documents synchronized as well.
Allocate time to configure individual apps properly. For example, many cloud-centric apps such as Evernote and Simplenote will need to be individually configured. Others, such as OneNote for Android, can function in standalone mode but offer greater convenience when paired to a SharePoint or SkyDrive storage location. Finally, Web browsers (Chrome or Firefox) should be set to sync with their desktop cousins.
Finally, there's one important security matter that most overlook when repurposing BYOD gadgets for work: Setting up a password lock should be non-negotiable, given the sheer amount of personal and work information stored on a typical tablet. It may also be a good idea to encrypt the contents of both the Android tablet and its external SD card.
Accessorize Your Android Tablet With Keyboards, Cases, Chargers
Like it or not, serious content creation requires a physical keyboard. Peripheral makers realize it, too — which explains why there are no shortage of tablet-optimized portable keyboards. While any keyboard with Bluetooth should work fine, one inadvertent disadvantage of the variety of Android tablets out there is that there are fewer keyboards (and accessories) designed specifically for a particular tablet.
Still, the Android platform offers good support for external keyboards, as keyboard navigation such as Alt-Tab works.
