Several years ago, in my role as an Enterprise Architect, we began to see a demand from various business components to leverage use of the growing popularity of Apple’s iPad in another example of consumer driven IT.  At the same time, Apple started to introduce the iPad2 making the iPad1 available at a discount.  Additionally, leveraging an additional discount for a refurbished model, I acquired an iPad1.

And so began my discovery of iPad technology.  I used the iPad as a note taking platform during several conferences and discovered some of the quirks of the Apple IOS operating system.  Unlike Windows and even the Android platforms, IOS does not have a visible file structure!  I did not realize this until I was at a conference taking notes with the iPad note application…a full day’s notes were instantly vaporized with some keystroke sequence I accidentally activated. Up until that time, I was sending the notes back home via e-mail (apparently the only way to preserve them) at the end of the day…lesson learned, do it hourly! (I believe you can also deposit the contents in Dropbox, but I’m not a big user of this service).

As I learned more about the iPad technology I configured it with various news applications as well as the solitaire application.  It served me well as a browser to catch up with the morning news, to pass the time.  At some point, my e-mail settings got lost and while I was able to read my e-mails, I could not send any…not much of a loss for my use.

As time goes on, Apple upgraded the IOS operating system from v5 to versions 7 and 8.  However, the iPad1 was limited to version 5.x.  As Apple introduced newer versions of the iPad and other IOS devices, applications began to leverage new capabilities of IOS especially v7.x.  Applications on the iPad1 gradually became obsolete and could no longer be upgraded.  Also, applications often crashed the operating system, especially with embedded content using pictures…in essence, my iPad1 was doing its equivalent to a “blue screen of death.”

Wanting to keep somewhat current with iPad-like technology, I sought out newer options.  First off, it had to run IOS v7 or v8.  I didn’t need all the latest features, and I wanted to manage the cost.  Apple had introduced the iPad Mini and currently has 3 generations of such.  I looked at both the iPad Mini 3 and the iPad Mini 2.  I found the screen size acceptible and the high resolution of the screen (“retina”) was nice.  I didn’t need the regular sized iPad (9″) and the smaller Mini was workable for my needs.  I settled on the iPad Mini 2, searched for refurbished or sale and found a good price at a local Microcenter computer store.

IOS hasn’t changed in some functionality limitations I’ve seen before – no visible file system.  But the smaller sized iPad Mini 2 was easy to carry, held its battery charge reasonably well, my applications ported over easy.  Additionally I was able to set up the e-mail accounts, so my reading e-mails was maintained…but in addition, I figured out how to sent e-mails although the iPad is not my primary approach to sending e-mails.

As with my previous iPad1 note taking, the ability to take notes with some formatting – like bullets – is not possible; one must use various manual characters to simulate bullets (such as a “*”), then e-mail the content, then copy into a more suitable word processor.

Pros:

• Small size…can sometimes fit in a big pants pocked.
• Cloud file storage available … Apple cloud and applications for Microsoft One Drive.
• Screen resolution really good.
• Application ecosystem very good…some nice utilities not readily available in other ecosystems.
• Suitable for a consumption device

Cons:

• IOS continues to frustrate with no file visibility
• Cannot see local network attached storage/file systems
• Pictures from the camera have to be e-mailed vice just moved to storage (I believe it can be moved to Apple’s cloud, but it cannot be moved to One Drive; I shun having to have a Microsoft Cloud,  Apple Cloud, Dropbox, Box, and an Android Cloud to use the various operating systems and features)
• Printing on home-bound printers not easy (I haven’t mastered it yet…not sure it is possible)
• Not really suitable for anything other than a consumption device; limited note-taking is possible.

Overall rating for the iPad Mini 2 — 1 out of 5 stars.

Note: Any names/trademarks used are NOT an endorsement of those items...but are provided for reference only and are owned by their owner.