Power for the Long Haul ....

Ok, after searching and searching and trying and trying ... I think I have a really good solution for travel and powering a unit for a LONG flight ... I have had to power my tablet on several trips to the Far East, and there really was no good solution to power over a 15 or so hour flight ... it was time with ipod and movies and maybe half the time working. I have a Motion M1400 and used to carry with me 2 extra batteries in my case to give me the time I needed when I was working ... I have an iGo juice 70 that has power plugs that will work on the plane as well as in the room, but most coach seats do not have power plugs, so scratch that ....

There are actually two problems here, first is the actual power solution and the second is the way to package it .... well, here goes ... I have purchased a generic Lithium Ion battery on Ebay that had capacity of 130 WH which I figured would give me about the capacity of 3 batteries .... the main thing was a quick recharge time and adequate capacity ... I was able to buy one on ebay for about $125 delivered ... there are lots of choices, so try and get the most flexibility on output configurations so even if you change units, it may still work for you ... anyway, I have used this unit and it works great for me ... I used my tablet until I got a low battery warning, then plugged the unit in. It looks like an external charging source as within an hour or so I was back to a full charge and the battery still had 3 of 4 lights, so my calculations should be pretty close ... figuring 3 full charges plus the battery, I should have a good 12 hours ... I have a second battery, so my 15hr target is made ...

Now I like to carry the bag pictured as it is compact and enough space for short trips or to carry on coupled with another bag through baggage for long trips ... this is a Samsonite under seat unit that does fit UNDER the seat on most planes (light enough to put overhead, but more convenient under) ... if you notice in the photo, my battery cable is coming out the bottom of the unit .... this bag has an access zipper on the bottom of the bag, super configuration and makes for flexible orientation for you ... the battery adds a little over a pound, but because you have wheels on the bag, it doesn't matter ... I am sure that this will give others ideas on how to configure the Mobile Musing power for the long haul .....

30 Minutes to a WOW ...

Have been working on several off the cuff presentations and discovered a couple of great tips for creating a presentation on the fly using the tablet PC ... start with the most used application on my machine ... MindManager ... MM is nicely integrated so you can build a map entirely in ink ... I like the look of the hand drawn map and it makes for a quick information spread ... you take that map and export it to a powerpoint ... I like to use a theme that shows innovation as the tag line and the hand drawn content really makes it stand out ...

Once the power point has been created, the last step is to export it again, but this time to Windows Journal .... once it is there, play it at full screen ... the tool bar on top remains, so you have your inking with marker, pen or highlighter ... this harkens back to the way I always used to present on an overhead and always used writing to emphasize ideas ... well, this use of the journal to present the powerpoint allows for all of the markup capabilities and more ...

This is a really slick way to make a presentation on the fly ... if you have more time you can doll it up with photos or figures or anything you want ... play with this ... you will be amazed how effective it is and what a WOW moment it can create for you ....

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify ....

Like in real estate (Location, Location, Location) the three most important words for one who travels is Simplify, Simplify, Simplify .... I am forever searching for the holy grail of ease of travel, so here is where I am now ...

After the travails that I gave on the last post, I am configured to use a cleaner flow of information ... I have found that it is buggy to use Outlook and all it's great features (read complexity) ... I still use it in the chain, but only now when offline ... let me first describe the email solution ... I have Yahoo Mail Premium (my old Oddpost account) that aggregates my different mailservers ... the raw feed comes into the box and is subject to good spam and virus filtering ... when I am travelling it can function as totally remote work without any other resources, so this remains as my fallback ... now the second crucial step ... I use Thundbird as my email client on the tablet as it seems clean and fast .. the one unique thing that I do is forward by bcc all of my replies to my gmail box (again, for remote access, but really for the superior way gmail allows me find things ... in the case where I just want to index, I will simply send the email to myself ... now on my yahoo box I will save in my folder, in the thunderbird resides another copy and seachable now in my gmail ... SO ... I have all my emails now remotely or on my desktop as I need them ...

For my contacts and PIM functions I use several things, but ease use is key ... I use GoBinder for my repository of information for meetings and inking functions ... it keeps my todo list, etc and projects ... this works great as it has the best inking support for me and I use it for meetings and travel ... I have found the the other web based system called Airset is another great cog in the wheel, it will synch seamlessly with outlook, so I don't have to load outlook, just keep the info current by using Airset and then synching at intervals or before trips ... one particularly useful function is the ability to modify the notes on the contacts, that I use to contemporaneously make notes on meetings, etc .... it is all easy and fast on Airset, then I synch and if I am not connected to the web, I can open Outlook and have all the current info .... works like a charm ... I am toying with the lists function in Airset and it looks like it can serve as my master todo ... but more on that in a later blog ....

Ultimate Bummer .... Reformat Drive C ...

I've been quiet lately because the ultimate problem surfaced ... a boot failure on my trusty tablet PC ... after over a year of constant use (now my only machine) ... last week, the dreaded blue screen showed the OS to be corrupted (had visions of this earlier, as the computer was getting a little ornery on some recent software installs ...)well the basic problem lay in the system not being able to boot after many
"experts" and help desks ... the only answer was to reformat and pray it wasn't hardware related ...

Let me digress to help you understand why I had only one machine and felt I could be OK with this ... I am using a Tablet PC that I dearly love and have had great luck with from both a travelling and remote use (client offices) ... I cannot see ever going back to another form factor as the slate fits my work style perfectly and the weight is the only way to fly (3.1 lbs) ... I was running a laptop and desktop and using folder share to mirror all changes on my machine to my other machines ... so that left me with three identical sets of data on three different computers ... this worked well as when I was traveling, the foldershare would synch automatically with my desktop that is always on ... well, my setup did require 3 different installs of my software, so the update and upgrades were getting a little onerous on this configuration ... so it was decided about 6 months ago that I would have only one machine and keep all my data in multiple places ... I found this little program called Mirror Folder that suited my needs perfectly ... I used this with a Seagate external USB drive and mirrored in real time all of my drive ... works like a charm ... when I travel I have a 5g pocket drive that I use Synch Toy to synch the data on so I have another remote storage unit ....

Back to the story ... SO, I now had a machine that I needed to recover and I had the disks, so there started the clean new machine and all the updates .... the Mirror Folder worked like a charm as all my data (in fact, all of my machine) was on the external drive ... so as I loaded the programs I was able to reorganize everything and now have a much better functioning computer ... it is really great, all the data up to the failure and a new machine to boot ... life is good !!!

A final note, I left my data (cleaned up some of the stuff I don't need and mirrored again today, so now I have my old data, and being mirrored from here ... great stuff and truly a life saver ....

A Little Night Music ....

Have been busy busy busy ... also had a funny problem with my unit and Mindmanager 6 ... we are still working on the problems, but kudos to the tech support from them ... they are very very good and I have confidence that it will be worked out ...

Ok, a friend passed this gem on to me and have been logged in since last night .... Pandora is a really neat app that creates a streaming "radio" station for you ... you guide it by telling it what you like and it will choose songs based on your likes, then as it plays music, you can tell it whether the choice was good, if not, it will start using that as further criteria ... after a few iterations, the play list was great .... really nice to have a feed of music that you like to hear, but all new to me ... WOW ... fun ... helps to have music to work to .... try it, another free app that is awesome and discover some new tunes ....