The paperless presentation finally is upon us
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I remember the days when everyone thought that laptops were going to become the ultimate presentation tool, where CMA’s and listing presentations would never be presented on paper again. I personally put a lot of effort into making that work for many of our Realtors. Maybe for some people that happened, but I mostly saw laptops fizzle because they were awkward to use with a client – being bulky and slow to boot among other problems. Certainly they are very useful for day-to-day work like checking email and cruising the Internet, but I don’t think the form factor works as a presentation tool.
A few months ago, I had a change of heart when I started to see how the Apple iPad could be used simply and effectively in front of a client. Not used as a tool for the sake of using it (in other words when it would have been easier and more effective to just use a printed presentation) but used because it was a better method of presenting the material. I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the iPad just works and nothing can be easier than flicking your finger across a screen to move from slide to slide. And the last time I checked you can’t embed a video into a piece of paper (they’re getting close though…) so showing off things like our weekly TV show or our listings on YouTube are possible on an iPad and also practical (unlike the less wieldy laptop).
I think any tablet works as far as form is concerned because the size is just a little smaller than a letter size piece of paper and easy to pass around and hold. However, right now the iPad is the tablet to buy because it is literally years ahead of any competitors due to its use of the same operating system that is tried and true on iPhones. It also has the best app support for a tablet. I use an Android phone so I am not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but it’s a different argument when you talk about tablets. Google’s Honeycomb operating system is their first effort in expanding Android to the tablet form factor and I don’t think it’s totally fleshed out yet. On top of that, the Xoom (the only Android tablet you can compare to the iPad with a straight face IMHO) costs $100 more than the wifi iPad2. And right now you can buy the original iPad for $349 from Apple if you buy the refurbished model. The refurbished model comes in a new outer shell so it’s indistinguishable from a “new” iPad and comes with the same 1-year warranty from Apple. To put my money where my mouth is, that’s the iPad I purchased for myself. I’ve had it for a couple months and I haven’t regretted the decision to buy a refurb or to pass on the iPad2.
My next blog is going to be about the apps and ways to make life easier with the iPad – things like Dropbox, Google Docs and putting a PowerPoint presentation on your tablet.
Posted by: 
George Christodoulou
