Tablets at Work Blog

Ice Cream Sandwich Update Reaches ThinkPad Tablets

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Android, Blog

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Originally Posted by Sachin Pathak, Lenovo Blogs

After some fits, starts and delays, we are pleased to announce that our ThinkPad Tablet users are now enjoying the rich flavor of Ice Cream Sandwich—the Android 4.0 operating system—on their tablets. The mobile OS update was delivered over-the-air to numerous countries (including the United States, UK, Europe and much of the rest of the world) during the past few weeks.

Why all the fuss about Ice Cream Sandwich? ThinkPad Tablet users with Android 4.0 will be able to take advantage of a couple of key aspects of the new OS:

A new and improved browser with a significant speed boost that allows you to jump to your favorite content faster and even save it for later in case there’s no network available.
Voice input that allows you to dictate text. As the voice input engine enters text, it underlines possible dictation errors in gray. After dictating, you tap underlined words to quickly replace them from a list of suggestions.

Read full post at Lenovo Blogs

Tablet Fever Hits Companies, Governments & Schools: Recent Stats

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Blog, Education, Enterprise, Government, Mobility Strategy, Tablet Adoption

adoption mobility strategy 2 government enterprise education blog The fact that tablet adoption is on the rise may seem like old news to the tech-savvy, but the fact that the market has grown at such a rapid pace is still somewhat surprising as compared with the adoption rate of other technologies. We thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at how tablet adoption is expected to impact different workplace-related industry segments. Read more

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Can the Tablet Optimize Your Mobile Workforce?
Gartner predicts that 80% of businesses will support a tablet-toting workforce by 2013. Are you ready? Get a better grasp of how your IT organization can empower knowledge workers, increase the efficiency of remote customer service teams, and enable field sales professionals to deepen customer relationships in this practical guide to tablets in the workplace.

4 Stages of Mobility Planning: Forrester Advice

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Blog, IT, Mobility Strategy, Tablet Adoption

adoption mobility strategy 2 it blog Tablets and other hand-held mobile devices can improve employee productivity, contribute to sales enablement and accelerate response time for managers. However, many IT professionals are unprepared to support their adoption in the enterprise and are failing to move toward a user-centric approach to delivering IT services. Many IT managers remain wary of personally owned mobile devices due to potential security concerns. Read more

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Field Studies: How Tablets Are Transforming Sales & Service Organizations
Could tablets really help your organization improve productivity? This brief discusses real-world examples of how organizations are deploying these mobile devices outside the four walls of the office. Learn how tablets can help your customer service and field sales teams in particular interact more effectively with clients, close deals faster, and reduce administrative work.

Students Show Off Apps Developed Through Lenovo/NAF Program

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Android, Apps, Blog, Education

education blog apps android 2 Originally Posted by Sam Morris, Lenovo Blogs

We’re excited to share the amazing and impressive work done by Grover Cleveland High School seniors from Queens, New York. This week they showcased more than 40 apps they developed as part of a mobile application development curriculum pilot program and competition by Lenovo and the National Academy Foundation (NAF). The students used our ThinkPad laptops and Android-based tablets to put their creativity and programming skills to the test, creating a tremendous range of apps.

The results were astounding:

Apps to help people with disabilities store their personal information, remember their medication schedule, exercise their memory, and even to more easily navigate public transit systems
Educational apps including fun and easy-to-use ways to remember math equations, make your own learning flashcards, and children’s learning such as matching sounds to animals and countries to their shapes
Apps focused on health and exercise including gauging BMI level, tracking exercise time, and learning new abdominal exercises, complete with pictures and levels of difficulty
Game apps, including “Space Battle,” “Gnome Bridge,” “Balloon Popper,” “Catch the Manana,” “Squirrels vs. Chipmunks,” and “Samurai Sword,” which is a movement-based app that creates different sword fight noises as the personal device is moved
Apps for international travelers such as converting miles to kilometers and currency converters
How-to apps including guides for making bracelets, nail polish designs, and dance moves

Mobile Device Management: Getting Started

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Blog, IT, Mobility Strategy

Originally posted by Todd R. Weiss, computerworld.com

The rapid-fire spread of mobile devices being used by enterprise employees can be a huge boon for businesses in productivity and customer service gains, but those advantages don’t come without a price.

The inherent flexibility and freedom to get business done anywhere, anytime, also makes it much harder to maintain the security and control of corporate data when employees are accessing and storing business information on their smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices. And the rush of new devices never seems to end, making it hard to stay out in front of innovations.

Enterprises must plan now for the mobile devices of the future that they don’t even know of yet,” says Kevin Benedict, principal analyst at Netcentric Strategies LLC in Boise, Idaho. “So you build an infrastructure that says it doesn’t care what devices are on the end of it and you have a framework that you just plug into.”

Getting there isn’t easy, however. One approach that can make implementing a mobile workforce easier — or at least consistent — is through mobile device management (MDM) strategies that can help enterprises address all related mobile issues in a top-to-bottom approach.

Among the challenges that an MDM strategy can help with: Which mobile devices to support, whether to allow employees to choose and bring their own devices into work, and how to handle security for mobile devices, including whether to have remote data wiping capabilities for lost or stolen devices.

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Windows 8 vs. iOS vs. Mountain Lion: Which OS Is Right for You?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Apps, Blog, Connectivity, IT, Windows 8

windows 8 it connectivity blog apps Today’s enterprise employees rely on anywhere from two to four different computers or mobile devices to do their jobs, from desktop and laptop PCs to tablets and smartphones. Managing a variety of different devices and operating systems can become a nightmare for users and for IT departments.

Microsoft and Apple are aiming to make this easier. You may already know that both Windows 8 and OS X Mountain Lion are launching this year, but you might not know how these two operating systems—as well as iOS, which is already in the market—will help you manage all the mobile devices in your workplace. Read more

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Lenovo Demos ThinkPad Tablet Running Windows 8

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Lane Jesseph Posted in Blog, Windows 8

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Originally Posted by Dana Wollman, Engadget

That tablet you see up there won’t go on sale for awhile — heck, it doesn’t even have an official name yet. But we were still able to get a feel for the design and basic specs after handling it for a few minutes. If you’re a ThinkPad fan, a Windows fan or both, even, head past the break for a preview of what’s to come later this year.

For the sake of this walk-through, we’re going to call this the ThinkPad Tablet — we assume no one will think we’re talking about the Android slate with the same name. As you can see in those hands-on shots, it stays true to the aesthetic you’ll see on the company’s ThinkPad laptops, with a soft-touch black finish that’s resistant to both smudges and scratches. As it happens, that surface also makes it easy to cradle the tablet in landscape mode, which can sometimes be unwieldy, depending on the particular tablet. A Lenovo rep on site wasn’t able to confirm the weight, but nevertheless, it feels light, and also thin, at 9.7mm thick.

Though Lenovo won’t say much about specs, we do know it’s running some unspecified Intel Clover Trail processor, and the battery is expected to max out at 10-plus hours on a charge. Taking a tour around the device, we may as well begin with that 10.1-inch screen, whose 1366 x 768 resolution seems pretty standard for a Windows 8 tablet of this size. On board, you’ll also find a pair of 2- and 8-megapixel cameras, as well as micro-HDMI and a docking connector, which suggests peripherals are on the way.

That’s all we can say for now — we weren’t permitted to hold the tablet after our video opp concluded — but we’ll definitely be back with more details about the device as we learn them.

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