I’ve been adapting to life with my iPad for the last year, and have managed to get things where as my consultancy has grown with a few folks and new clients, we’re making things easier for all of us.

So – what’s on my iPad – is a mix of apps that also have either a cloud component for sharing / syncing /back up of data, along with some strong productivity apps.

I generally also look to see what works on BOTH the iPad and the desktop — I run a MacBook Pro, but where possible I seek both Mac and Windows desktop apps  - and amazingly, most of these also have linux versions too…

First step – get some FREE cloud services! (you can decide to pay for more later)

1 – get on Google Docs. I personally don’t like the web interface a lot – but it’s always there, it always works, and it’s amazing how many other apps can exchange data to google docs, as well as google calendars. It’s all free anyway, and I like having both a personal as well as a business e-mail account.

Also, with Google Calendars – and docs etc. it’s drop dead simple to share your calendar with your team.

2 – Get a Dropbox account. This gives you storage on their servers, and makes life a lot easier for file transfers and back ups.

3 – Get an Evernote account. There’s some overlap  on what Dropbox offers. I have a paid up $45 / year account for some features I liked.

4 – Get a toodledo account. I paid the $14,95 / year so I could share my todo lists and project information with my team members and clients.

5 – Get setup on an iCloud account for syncing / storing.

Get all the iPad, iPhone, and Desktop apps they offer and get it all synching.

With that going on – now you can get some apps hooking this all together!

On my Mac – I use the default Addressbook.app, and the iCal.app – and since I’ve got my iPhone and iPad it’s all hooked to synch wirelessly via the cloud. For e-mail I found the Sparrow mail app – I just like it better for all the ways it handles mail with may various account.

I’ve spent a lot of time with note taking apps – but I’ve stuck with Notability, and I’ve been helping with the new beta release due out pretty soon – simply fantastic!  Our Sales Director uses it extensively, including the voice recording capabilities.

Doc’s to go is a very mature app for handling common MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint  etc. format documents – and gives you an option if your forced to edit without a full laptop. Add in a copy of Print n Share to enable printing….

For my time billing – I use Office time -  it’s centralized on my iCal setup on my Google calendar. Works great with the desktop version too. Almost have it fully hooked up to my in house accounting on Postbooks.

My final great find is a slightly expensive app called Informant HD – which is a fantastic replacement for my old Franklin Planner….I’ll put a full review up – but it’s now replace my original planner called Opus Domini.

Informant is a nice planner / organizer – but Opus lacked cloud synch and back up, and I’d been looking for a long time for some better features for my task list – including the ability to share tasks / notes etc. – which Informant handles nicely via iCloud back up, iCal sync, and Toodledo sync…and it’s got hooks to the Addressbook.app too!