With the right accessories, an Apple iPad or other tablet can be a very useful tool in an office environment. However, these devices are also making waves in less conventional professional settings.

Chris Grant, a laboratory coordinator at Juniata College in Pennsylvania, told MacWorld that he now uses an iPad to conduct fieldwork. Every summer, Grant reportedly treks out into the wilderness with his students to collect local marine life and test them for mercury. Before investing in a tablet, Grant says, he used to have to bring a substantial amount of scientific equipment with him, but now, his iPad suffices.

With built in features including a camera, GPS, a rangefinder and a notebook, Grant's iPad can take the place of multiple essential items. Though iPad adoption isn't taking the scientific community by storm just yet, it seems to be on the rise with students especially, who can use apps like Simplenote and Numbers to record their findings.

While certain Toshiba and Samsung laptops or even the Apple Macbook Air may be able to tackle some of these tasks, the combination of the tablet's portability and the vast offerings of the App store make the iPad an easy choice for anyone who regularly conducts in-depth research in open air settings.

The source states that some students are also using specialized services like LabGuru to keep track of the necessary protocols they need to follow throughout an experiment. According to the source, before this innovation, many scientists have had to rely on notebooks worth of procedure to make sure that their research was conducted correctly.

Whatever your professional or academic environment may be, a high-functioning tablet could potentially help streamline certain elements of your work, so speak to a PortableOne representative about the latest models available.