iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet

TechRepublic has published their choices of the top 10 iOS 4.2 Features for iPads used in business.  I have found some of these features as very valuable but I haven’t been able to take advantage of several of them as of yet.

Multitasking: I played with the multitasking some and so far I have found it to be a great boon to my productivity but I sure would have liked two more things added to this function:

1. An easy way to close an application when you are through with it and
2. I would like to have the application continue to run in the background when I jump to another application.

I find it really annoying that I can’t listen to a video without it running in the forefront. Sometimes it is nice to continue listening while you jump to some research or to make notes about what you are listening to.

AirPlay: This could really be a neat app in as TR discusses for presentations. It works with the new Apple TV $99 product and you could hook this up to a projector or large screen TV to give presentations, training or any other kinds of video in your conference room.

AirPrint: The list of printers that are capable of taking advantage of this feature are very few at the moment. There are several HP’s working right now but there are several manufacturer’s that seem to be working on this but for now I have to rely on my little Lexmark App to allow me to print at home. It works pretty well out of the utility but it is limited to printing pictures and websites that are brought up within the application. It doesn’t take advantage of the built in functions with iOS 4.2.

Find My iPad is now free. Whoopee!

Folders: I have hated having so may screens just as I did on my iPhone but you have to be careful how you group applications because I have found that even though my initial consolidation seemed to make sense at the time, as time goes by you forget sometimes where you put apps that you don’t use very often.

Unified Inbox: This feature makes it easy to quickly look at multiple email account inboxes at one time. This is a real time saver if you have many different mail accounts for different things.

Web Browser Search: This is a nice addition that allows you to find key words on a webpage and is especially useful big full pages.

Quick Controls: By double tapping the Home Button (takes you to the multitasking screen) and swiping left to right on the panel that appears you will get to the the quick controls panel that lets you work with the following functions: play/pause button and forward/back buttons for the iPod app, a volume control slider, a brightness slider, and a new virtual orientation lock setting. The old lock above the volume buttons is now a mute button, which I think is stupid but you go with what Apple gives you and you like it!

The Wireless app distribution and Remote device management functions sound great on paper for Enterprise support of large numbers of iPad Corporate supported units and I will have to see this in use before I can comment further on it. Anyway, take a look at the link listed below to see what TechRepublic has to say about these new features.

TechRepublic Top 10 New iOS 4.2 features:

Multitasking

AirPlay

Wireless app distribution

AirPrint

Find My iPad

Folders

Unified inbox

Remote device management

Web browser search on page

New quick controls console

iPad's big upgrade: The top 10 iOS 4.2 features for business | ZDNet