Mediaboss Marketing

By Will Hobson, Times Staff Writer Will HobsonTampa Bay Times In Print: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

LARGO Since Apple debuted the iPad in 2010, the sleek device has revolutionized and dominated the tablet computer market. Apple has sold more than 55 million. The company may soon get seven more customers: Largo's city commissioners.

The iPads will replace laptops as the devices commissioners use to check email and review city documents from home. The city staff is still working out the kinks of determining Largo's application needs, but information technology director Harold Schomaker thinks he'll be ordering several (depending on how many of the seven commissioners request one) in the next few weeks.

And although some residents may criticize commissioners for spending city money on iPads while trying to cut the budget, Schomaker counters that the iPads will actually save Largo tax dollars.

Commissioners now use Dell laptops, which cost between $1,200 and $1,400, Schomaker says, and are out of warranty and in need of replacing. With Apple's recent release of the latest model, older iPads are on sale for as little as $399.

"Why buy a big old laptop you have to lug around when you can get something smaller and cheaper that has the same functionality?" said Schomaker, who has been using an iPad 2 at work for the past two months to test different types of applications commissioners will need.

One of the applications Schomaker is testing, iAnnotate, may have won over Commissioner Harriet Crozier, who has declined to take a city laptop. The iAnnotate app allows users to jot notes onto electronic documents they can save for future reference.

Crozier is Largo's representative on a number of local boards, like the Metropolitan Planning Organization, and often finds herself juggling several bulky agenda packets, each with a different set of notes. With an iPad, she could save the agendas and her notes, all in one place.

"I think it's really going to help me, and it's a great price," said Crozier, who objected a few years ago when she says former City Manager Steve Stanton bought laptops for the commissioners without asking first. Crozier didn't like the idea of reading agenda documents off the screen of a laptop, but she's sold on the sleeker iPads.

So is Mayor Pat Gerard, who has left her city laptop at City Hall for the last year. She doesn't like lugging the laptop around, but Gerard thinks she'll get more use out of the iPad, which is less than 10 inches in height and weighs less than 2 pounds.

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Largo commissioners' digital efforts going smaller with iPads