Either way, he excelled using just this mini keyboard and I figured I could at least plunk out some decent songs with

I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7'', and I tried the irig keys using the USB PC/Mac cable, and it works, the Tab recognizes the midi controller, I have an app called Midi Melody, it's like the Synthesia, it works but sometimes stops working, but I think it's the app

You might as well use a velocity randomizer midi effect, you would get similar results

A dedicated laptop musician might find enough use to justify having both of these small keyboards.