Walt Mossberg, who writes about technology for the Wall Street Journal, posted a helpful review of iPad productivity suites last week on All Things D. People are increasingly leaving their laptops at home these days when they travel and are using an iPad instead. But that typically entails having some relatively robust software to play the role of those familiar desktop applications: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. No app is going to have all the features of the desktop applications, but most are good at opening and editing files created using these software programs.
In addition to compatibility with Microsoft's offerings, a key issue is file management. On your desktop computer, you organize your files by putting them in folders and access them in these locations. But iOS doesn't have this sort of filing system. So how do you transfer files back and forth between your desktop computer and iPad, and keep the files in sync? The cloud, of course.
