Multi-users (ideally with a login via AD…) on the iPad?

Question

My employer bought an iPad to play around with, bring to client meetings to show prototypes, slide around a desk, etc. It's neat and all, but one of the huge issues is that once you set it up for a given email account, it is very much linked to that account. This makes it really unusable when multiple people are taking it out over periods, must clear the emails out and basically reset the device.

Is there any way to integrate the iPad with active directory and allow users to actually log in, thus keeping their settings separate for all their applications? This would make it great (to the point where my employer sort of wants to get everyone one), but if not...they're really rather useless to us. Just curious, thanks!

Answer 1

The only way I know to handle this is via backup/restore. Set up one user, take a backup. Reset the device to factory and repeat for each user who can "check it out". Now you just restore from the right backup and re-sync to that user's iTunes account each time.

This isn't exactly convenient, but it works well enough if you don't have a lot of information on it. A few apps can usually sync in a just a minute or two. In most corporate settings, you're not gonna have a huge photo, video, or music libraries to sync over. What you might have are powerpoint or presentation files that need to be updated. If you do have a lot of data, I don't there is a good solution at all.