Carrying Your IT Equipment With You?

dada21 asks: "As an on-the-go journalist, IT consultant, entrepreneur and blogger, I find myself with way too much stuff. About 5 years ago I started to downsize and cut back to just 2 PCs total (small laptop and PVR desktop), 1 PDA, and 2 cell phones (main and backup). The laptop goes everywhere (doubling as a great GPS center in the vehicle for those long road trips), the PDA does, too. Traveling with all 4 electronic devices is a mess of cables: power/charger, USB, and the like. Everything is light and small but the bulk of all of it adds up. I currently use a Toy Machine messenger bag but it just doesn't work when you're trying to shove a file folder, pen/appointment selection and a day-timer in it. I'll spend the cash, even if it is really expensive, for the convenience, speed and quality for a jack-of-all-bags that can handle the jack-of-all-trades. What bag is the best solution?"

Comments

Redundant

[lucm]

The laptop goes everywhere [...], the PDA does, too

Why do you need a PDA if you have your laptop with you all the time? If you really, really want a small and clunky GUI for your address book or calendar, I'm sure you can find a PDA emulator somewhere.

Re:Redundant

[Planesdragon]

1: Speed. From walking down the street with everything put away, one can get out a PDA and look up (whatever) faster than stopping, opening the laptop, probably brining it out of hybernation, and launching the application you need.

2: Utility. A modern PDA doubles as either an iPod, a camera, a GPS, or all of the three.

3: Safety. The most expensive PDA on the market is about $400. A geek's laptop is probably anywhere from twice to five times that expensive, and a fair bit harder to fix if broken, to boot. (A replacement PDA screen runs about $50, and Palm at least sells a "one-screen" replacement plan.)

Re:If money is no object

[dada21]

Have you considered a man-servant? As the commercials used to say, just Ask Jeeves.

This might sound foolish, but I have, and am actively looking for someone to be my personal assistant. In the old days, businessmen took on younger entrepreneurs to mentor to in exchange for assistant services (don't read into that). From laundry to note-taking to writing thank-you cards, the assistant did a lot.

I looked into hiring a driver/assistant and realized that the cost (US$30,000 a year) would pay for itself quickly. If you bill at a reasonable rate (let's just throw out US$150 per hour), you'd make up their salary in 200 hours, or 4 hours saved a week! VERY well worth it.

That being said, US$30K sounds cheap until you realize that you're also teaching and mentoring and eventually helping them become what you are.

I know you were joking, but it is a great idea that shouldn't be ignored.

Re:Crumpler

[ScuzzMonkey]

Digital lifestyle or no, that site sucks. What is it that online retailers can't get through their heads about making it easy for people to see their stuff, and to give them money for it? As someone else already suggested, I'll be sticking with Tom Bihn.

Re:Good question

[Philip K Dickhead]

I really like these "TSR"s. The flexibility they offer, along with programs using Borland .OVL files is nothing short of amazing. This has prevented many of my "diskette" shuffle routines. How does all of this work?

As you may or may not have noticed, a diskette is roughly the size and shape of a piece of bread. And while you pop bread into a toaster, you insert diskettes into your computer's diskette drive. In fact, you'll find that some software even acts much like the common toaster. These programs feature electronic calculators, address books or other tools that you can ``pop up'' on your screen while working in other programs. (Similar to the way your toast might pop up as you finish frying a ham-and-cheese omelette.)
These pop-up programs are referred to as: memory-resident software or terminate-and-stay-resident programs.

TSRs are programs which stay in your computer's random access memory, or RAM. RAM is the temporary memory inside your computer. You see, most IBM and IBM-compatible PCs can't load two programs into memory at the same time. In other words, DOS won't let users simultaneously load two traditional programs, like Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Word. (Lotus Development Corp.'s Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet, while Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Word is a word processing program. Spreadsheets calculate numbers and word processing programs let users create documents.) But unlike regular programs, TSRs can run while you're working in almost any application.

This way, they provided a form of multitasking, or task switching, for users of DOS programs. DOS programs are designed to be used alone, but many people prefer the convenience and efficiency of using two or more programs simultaneously, without first having to quit out of one to load another. TSRs provide this capability. Windows programs are becoming increasingly popular, but many people still use DOS programs primarily or exclusively. And, for Windows users, there are issues surrounding TSRs you should be aware of.

You generally load a TSR through your Autoexec.bat file, a startup file that runs each time you boot your PC. By placing the command that loads the TSR on a line in this file, the TSR will load automatically and be available in whatever other programs you're using.

You pop up a TSR using its hotkey. A hotkey is a key combination, such as CTRL-ALT, that's defined by the particular TSR. You can often change the default hotkey to another combination if it conflicts with your existing application or another TSR.

I hope this is helpful, to those who are eager to follow the recommendation of the previous post!