iPad Accessories for the Serious Professional

That laptop died on you one time too many. It became too slow, with too many viruses. The battery deteriorated to the point where it lasted only two hours. It took four minutes to boot up from cold. You always had to sit down in order to use it. In other words, you had enough. It was time for a change.You are now a serious professional who is serious in making the iPad your next laptop -- your main productivity tool, where you type documents.
Now you need tools to go along with your iPad. This review includes two of the critical hardware ingredients: The most rugged case money can buy and the leading portable keyboard.Let's start with the rugged case. This is the Pelican i1075, which has a list price of $79.99, although Amazon(AMZN) will sell it to you for $52.25. The Pelican i1075 case protects your iPad and a small handful of accessories from a fall as well as from being dropped three feet into the ocean. It is excellent for that rafting trip down the Grand Canyon, where the bag will hit rocks and be submerged by water from time to time. Specifically, the Pelican case fits the Apple BlueTooth keyboard inside, which the Apple(AAPL) store will sell you for $69. This is an excellent keyboard. However, unless you are carrying it in a bag such as this Pelican i1075, it is not nicely portable. You don't want to be walking up and down the street with this keyboard in your hand, jammed up against the iPad itself.
But what if you also need a keyboard when you're on "light duty" -- such as simply walking to the cafe on a weekend and you want to use it there for an hour or so?That's where the Zagg Flex keyboard enters the picture. It also has a list price of $79.99, although again Amazon sells it for less -- $56.99 in this case. The Zagg Flex is smaller than the Apple keyboard, and it's more plasticky and the keyboard feeling is not nearly as good. But it's good enough for "light duty" when you are not in a professional mood, perhaps.
The stand even holds a large high-resolution smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. This has the particular virtue of not being tied to any particular kind of tablet. Let's say you have an iPad 1, then upgrade to an iPad 2 and a 3 and so forth. Perhaps you have all of them. Perhaps you also have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. This Zagg Flex fits them all. Hence the name "Flex."That would be a waste and bureaucratic nightmare. It even works with a high-resolution large-screen smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, on which I actually managed to author an article.