Liberty went ahead and invested in an iPad this week, partly to improve the team productivity when out of the office and partly to show off. After using it for a few days it looks like it's only really good for trying to impress technophobic clients.

Right now, for search engine marketers it's a very disappointing tool, and here's why...

1. No decent SEO apps - Only one or two exist right now and they are nothing compared to what we are used to on the iPhone. Simple things like source code analysis and ranking tracking aren't available yet.

2. No AdWords access - Safari keeps crashing when you try to do anything within the pay per click system, meaning all that account management work we had planned to squeeze in between meetings and when travelling isn't going to be happening.

3. No browser SEO plug-ins - Without Firefox we can't enjoy all of the tools that make our job easier. Everything, from checking links to viewing code, has to be done the long way.

4. No keyword tool access - As with point 2, Safari falls over when trying to use the Google keyword tool, so keyword research is one more thing that either has to be done in the office or on a laptop/net book

5. No flash - Flash may be the enemy of most search engine marketers, but it's nice to be able to view videos that are not on YouTube. Right now we can't see a lot of SEO training videos that we subscribe to, such as the SEOmoz whiteboard Fridays. And we like our whiteboard Fridays.

A lot of these should be ironed out and improved over the coming months, but if you work in Internet marketing and are planning on using an iPad for business, then we advise you to save your cash for the time being.

P.S. Don't get us started on the lack of tethering to an iPhone.