360 Convos with Carol Doane: Keyboard vs the pad, which one wins

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Keyboard vs the pad, which one wins

For tactile people, keyboards offer intense relationships. Musicians spend hours on electronic or acoustic keyboards tickling the 'ivories.'

Typists are no longer clerks or secretaries, they're CEO's, they're IT administrators or web developers.

I fit somewhere in between.

I started playing the piano at age five, learned html some years later, and managed, not a complete company, but a sales department along the way.

All those activities required being intimate with a keyboard.

Today, I am attempting to navigate without a keyboard. I received a Kindle for Christmas and have spent more time searching for and downloading free books than I have actually reading any of them. I have, however, completed two books, but I read both of those my Droid, the model with a keyboard. (I had downtime -- I was standing in line somewhere).

The office has an iPad. It bounces around the media group, mostly boomeranging back to me. It works best when I want to show a client a video the team has produced, or I am presenting and using it for notes, but I haven't been able to dig down deep, and know it intuitively to use out to do work.

It doesn't replace my laptop.

So, why are people purchasing these keyless electronic devices if they don't serve their purpose -- to help us pack 200 books in our bags, or help us get more work done, easier, faster?

According to a June 2011 Retrevo study, 48 percent of consumers buying pad devices, do so because of price, low price.

I now have a new mission. I will invent a new electronic device with a short, catchy name with an awesome slogan (probably not that necessary; can anyone remember the slogan for Kindle or iPad, quick now, no looking it up), price it so low you can't bear to live without it. Then I'll do my own study (Retrevo is a shopping site focused solely on consumer electronics), and get curious people to tap into my awesome site which not only sales electronics, but blogs about them and offers free manuals of whatever you can't figure out how to operate.

I love marketing. Maybe I'll learn to love the iPad as well as my notepad.

What relationship leap are you trying to make?