Will the new IPAD help my real estate business?

I love my ipad for convenience. . . it's so easy to use.  :)

Only if you use it  to do these things that you've outlined... 

Maggie, I've been going back and forth a LOT lately about getting an iPad vs getting a laptop. iPad has won and I will be purchasing in the next few days.

Maggie, you can do a lot more than this on an IPad.  It's a great way to do listing presentations, to orgainize showing tours and lots of other stuff.  I still haven't figured out how to upload photos to my blog.

Thanks Maggie but I'm not sold yet. I'll wait for your follow up stories to see if you have converted to only using the IPAD or to learn that you have to have both to meet all of your computing needs. Best of luck.

Maggie, I owned an iMac and an iPhone before purchasing my iPad. But I have since let my daughter have my iPhone as I don't see the need for both an iPad and an iPhone. I love my iPad and I take it with me everywhere. It is so handy. I no longer print out the MLS sheets. I just pull up the info on my iPad and use that. My clients love it. Then I email them the properties that the liked the best. This has so many uses for my business. The best purchase I've ever made.

I too, been wondering about the IPAD. I just recently bought one and still learning how to use it. It's a bit complicated but I defined it as a another expensive toy.

Hi Maggie, thanks for sharing reflections on your new tool, I am glad that you like it.  After doing a lot of research this past year and finally settled on the Acer iconia tablet, the Ipad like all apple products was just too expensive when compared to comparable tablets it seemed to be about twice the price.

Although the androids to have a wealth of apps, I do sometimes regret when I read about a cool app for the ipad and wish I could try it.

Good luck with yout iPad. There are some good posts about iPads by Cheryl Ritchie.

Congrats on the new i-pad. I recently purchased an android tablet, and I like it. Good luck with yours, I'm still learning.

Great post Maggie!  And Elizabeth - thank you for mentioning DocuSign!  For those of you, new to the iPad, you may not know but DocuSign has a Free DocuSign for iPad and DocuSign for iPhone app available for download on iTunes.  The app integrates seamlessly with your activated DocuSign account and allows you to reduce printing, driving around town for signatures and get your deals signed faster!   It's easy to get started with a 30 day truly free trial, with no credit card required so you can try out DocuSign along with app free for 30 days before commiting to subscription.  I hope you all decide to check it out.

The new iPad, very much like the previous two models, are very much a part of the "ecosystem" Apple has built that not only centers on computers any longer, or even similar devices such as smartphones and tablets, but software and media sales.  To best be appeciated, an iPad would (ideally) be deployed alongside iPhones (which is being seen more and more often) and Macintosh-based laptops/desktops (not as often seen because of the still-existing software gap between Windows and Mac OS X), and your home will be hooked up to an Apple TV set full of music, movies, and TV shows you purchased from iTunes running on an Apple-based hardware network.

That aside--an iPad makes a compelling purchase argument on its own.  Like Windows on the desktop, the apps are (on the tablet front) on the iPad.  Android does a pretty good job of competing as a smartphone platform but that's another story.  The "light" software and fast hard-drive makes the iPad much faster at some of the most fundamental things people do on computers--professionals and consumers alike (and as the next version of Windows will be seen on tablets competing with the iPad before the end of the year, I would be shocked if what comes to be the "iPad 4" doesn't have more and more software and/or hardware accessories that allow it to be a true laptop replacment for most circumstances).

Maggie, I had to come back and ask how, or why, you don't have an iPhone? What are you using? I couldn't imagine doing business without my iPhone, and now I'm gonna get the iPad. I've talked to a boatload of people and I can't wait!

I can't believe I lasted this long before making this invaluable purchase for my career, client and my sanity.  Great post!