A Great Experiment ....

Well, it has been a week now without my trusty tablet and I can say that it was a good week and full of revelations ... for one who has been stuck to a computer for over a decade, being without for this whole week was truly eye opening ... broadening my vistas (no pun intended), and has left me with a much calmer outlook on work and the related technology ...

And the winner is ... I do believe using an adedquate (8 Gig in my use) pocket hard drive to carry all my work and key working software has allowed me an unprecented ability to function and function well ... I do believe that this has all be made possible in the last few months by the bugeoning plethora of web 2.0 applications ... I know you are all tired of this phrase, but in real life some of the apps that have come our way are invaluable and have allowed this untethered work style. With the last piece of the puzzle being the mind mapping capability (more on another new app tomorrow) my tool box is now full ...

This week brought several moments of anxiety as I had to pull old files and get several reworks done ... using my google docs and sheets and uploading from my drive to the storage area, and then adding the collaboration have made this effortless ... in fact, I think this is even better than I used to do it, as the versions and rewrites are all on the site and can be undone and reworked with ease (once a final is done, I download and save on the drive again) ... works like magic and towards the end of the week, I was using this as a matter of course on both docs and spreadsheets ...

There was also a time where I had to make a product white paper, so my normal workflow is to conceptualize the project and presentation using MindManager before exporting to word and fleshing it out ... well using a web based mind map program and then taking it into google docs accomplished the same thing and then I was able to polish the document using open office to a final form .... all of this done on a computer (any computer with a hard drive) and not leaving any traces of work behind ... what a great way to go ...

I have populated the drive with apps from portable apps that will make you self contained ... that is a winner .... and all accomplished with just the cost of the drive ... double winner ... enjoy!!!