By Ethan Roberts
Monkey Mind LLC

The iPad is a wonderful consumer device. It's really great for business, too. Below are some reasons you can use to sell your boss on buying you one...

- It's incredibly portable, even with the bluetooth keyboard that you're going to want for any serious writing on this thing (I'm using one right now). The "instant on" where you lift the cover and you're ready to go is incredible for efficient use of time. Compare this to a netbook and you'll see that you save serious time every day by having it available immediately. <continued>

- There are a lot of great apps, and they are cheap. Below is a list of my favorites, as well as some alternatives that I haven't tried out, but are well-reviewed and worth looking at.

iaWriter: A minimalist writing app that focuses on the act of writing, not dealing with tempmlates, colors, fonts, etc. Pages is Apple's official word processing application and I've heard both good and bad things, but if you're like me and just need to spend time getting words down iaWriter is outstanding for the job. And it's half the price.

Instapaper: There are a million good articles to read every day, and most of the time you can't read them as soon as you find them. Enter Instapaper. With a simple click on your browser toolbar, the article is stripped of all adds and sent to your Instapaper account for reading later. When you have free time, hop on your iPad and all your articles are there for you to read at your leisure. The free version is outstanding, the $4.99 version adds a couple of features and supports the developer. ReadItLater is an alternative to look at.

ScannerPro: Whether you're a road warrior or you just get those occasional documents that you need to print, sign, and send back, ScannerPro is a great way to get the job done. The interface is intuitive and fast, and it keeps you from having to buy another big piece of hardware to take space on your desk. Great for scanning receipts, too, if you need to keep track of things like that.

Wunderlist: My favorite task manager to date. Wunderlist is free, cross-platform, and totally easy to use. You can have multiple lists to organize your tasks, keep track of them by date, and even have a quick "status board" to let you know what's due today. I keep a separate one for tracking my mileage, for example, and books I want to read, separate from the list of business tasks I need to get done.

Notesy: If you're a fan of Dropbox, Notesy is a great way to take notes and then upload them directly to your dropbox account. I don't use this as much as I expected, as I'm more of an Evernote fan. But if you're into Dropbox, this is totally worth using.

Evernote: I've sung the praises of Evernote before, and the iPad app is great. Everything goes in here for me, from meeting notes to pictures from the whiteboard during meetings. I can't recommend Evernote enough.

Night Stand: Turn your iPad into a bedside alarm clock, complete with current weather and twitter and facebook integration. You can say it'll help make sure you're at work on time every day :).

These are just the ones I use every day. There are official apps from Apple for spreadsheets, presentations, etc., and all of them will help you be more portable and responsive for your clients.

One thing worth mentioning: Taking notes on an iPad in meetings is excellent. It doesn't block your view of everyone else in the meeting, and let's face it, you get cool points.

Do you have any favorite business apps that you use on your iPad? Did your boss buy you one after you showed him this article? Let us know in the comments!

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