One of the surprising elements of the iPad's smash success is the increasing number of people who use the tablet for business reasons, be they video conferencing, database organization, or remote access. If you're keen on iPad productivity, you can’t ignore one of the most important iPad business apps categories: the mobile office suite. Apple's very own iWork for iPad ($9.99 each for Keynote, Numbers, and Pages, 4 stars) fills that role nicely, but it isn't the only mobile office suite in the App Store. Piscel's Smart Office lets users create, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations (you can view PDF, JPG, PNG, GIF, BM, Vector WMF, and EMF files as well). The $9.99 Smart Office is affordably priced (you'll pay nearly $30 for the three parts in iWork's suite), but it contains a number of questionable design choices that limit its appeal.

Getting Started With Smart Office

Launching Smart Office brings you to a black home screen with blue highlights. Tapping "New Document" opens 12 options that start you on the journey: "Blank document," "Letter-sized document," "Office 2003 document," "Report document," "Black presentation," "Dark presentation," "Light presentation," "Office 2003 presentation," "Blank spreadsheet," "Chart data spreadsheet," "Expenses spreadsheet," and "Office 2003 spreadsheet." iWork for iPad offers not only more templates—Pages alone has sixteen—but they're also given specific names and designs that let you specifically know what they're about. Would you rather create a resume from a Smart Office's "Letter-sized document" or Page's properly-formatted and easily identifiable "Classic Resume" or "Modern Photo Resume"?

A menu bar resides at the top of the screen that helps you navigate and manage content. There's a "Back," "Undo," "Redo," "File" (which lets you save, print, e-mail, and search content), "Keyboard" (which hides and returns the virtual keyboard), and "View." "View" includes two sub-options: one that serves up context sensitive views depending on whether you're working in a document, presentation, or spreadsheet. The other is a 3D effect that I couldn't imagine anyone possibly wanting to look at for any extended period of time. It requires donning red-and-blue 3D glasses, and is more gimmicky than useful.

(Trying To) Get Things Done

I opened a blank document and immediately began typing a few sentences as I wanted to see if Smart Office auto-saved files—it doesn't. The document that I had worked in wasn't there when I turned off the iPad and turned it back on again. I quickly learned that tapping File > Save (or Save As) in essential to preserving data. On top of that, Smart Office saves to "My Documents" by default—you have to back out the main screen in order to save it to another area such as Dropbox. The extra steps, though relatively minor, irked me as I was used to Apple's Page doing that in the background. Call me a slave to technology, if you will.

That's a relatively minor issue compared to the app's usability issues. As there aren't any formatting icons in the documents/presentations/spreadsheets menu bar, you have to highlight text and then tap the highlighted text to open a formatting submenu. I detest that method, as it breaks my typing flow. Pages for iPad has similar formatting method, but it also contains, as an alternative, a dedicated formatting bar that lets you select italics, bold, and so on—I like this flexibility. Also, when you tap a spreadsheet cell, it opens a menu that lets you add formatting, alignment, and other options—not the virtual keyboard. In order to type within a cell, you have to tap the keyboard icon at the top of the screen. Frustrating? Very much so.

Similar Products

Our Current Picks for Get Organized: Productivity on the iPad

There's also a section called "Google Docs" that lets you log in with your Google credentials to access files you have stored in the cloud. Once you link the account to the app you can edit at will, but, oddly, you can't save files created in Smart Office in Google Docs. Smart Office states that this feature is in "beta" and some files can't be shared via this method.

The Upside

One of the coolest features is "Pages," which takes multi-page documents and splits them into a Cover Flow-like view that lets you finger through pages. It's a nice alternative for those who don't fancy scrolling up and down through lengthy documents to find particular pages. It's also quite easy to create slideshows while on the go by adding text and other items. You can also edit PowerPoint slide text, but, unfortunately, you can't add or edit images.

Smart Office also let me log into my Dropbox account from within the app, which let me quickly fetch files I had stored in the cloud. However, not all files were viewable or editable. For example, when I attempted to key a few lines into a TXT file that was created on my Mac Mini, a "Cannot edit document" message appeared. In another instance, a DOC file created on a Windows PC returned a "Cannot view this document" message when I tried to open it. Needless to say, this was quite frustrating, as I had no problem opening them within Dropbox (for iPad). Picsel states that the app may have trouble handling large files. Still, I liked the ability to save files directly to Dropbox, which immediately pushed them to all my computers. iWork has a similar feature that saves files to Apple's own iCloud.

Should You Buy Smart Office (for iPad)?

The complete Apple iWork suite may cost three times as much as Smart Office, but if you want an intuitive experience don't hesitate to spend the extra cash. Smart Office will get the job done if you're looking to save a few chips, but be prepared to experience a handful of head-scratching usability issues.

More iPad Apps Reviews:
•   Spotify
•   Comixology
•   SimCity BuildIt (for iPad)
•   Mathway - Math Problem Solver (for iPad)
•   Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomy (for iPad)
•  more