Great Mobile Computing Tips

Mobile ComputingSo I travel a fair bit with work. Being a System Administrator for a large number of clients as well as a general IT consultant and operating a general computer, iPhone, iPad, and data recovery service centre with multiple staff means I have to be well connected and at the very least be able to remotely assist when issues occur. Additionally I need to be able to easily contact my staff in our service and support centre and handle documents and other communications easily. Here’s a few tools I use that may assist you also while I am running around Sydney and surrounding areas.Laptop – Gigabyte Q1105M – $500 Despite a number of reviews who try to knock this netbook I find the screen size so much better than the Acer Aspires 8-10″ screens. The battery life is around 3-5 hours depending on how bright the screen is and that is 3-5 of solid work so the battery easily does me over the course of the day. The speed of the netbook is fine also usually any wait time is to do with the load times from the drive which is the same for most laptops. The only issue I has is the same with a lot of other laptops, Glossy screens. So useless when working outside unless you crank the brightness up which of course soaks up that precious battery life. I know they are meant to be crisper but I would gladly sacrifice this small quality improvement for better usability outdoors.Drop Box – Free 2GB or $9.99/month for 50GBFor easily syncing the work I do on the road with the office I use this handy app. It also lets me edit and access files off line which is handy and functions as a backup for critical files and databases. Free version is 2GB but it’s pretty cheap for the upgraded versions. It also notifies me when new versions are updated so while I am working I know what my staff have been working on and also if there is a conflict it saves both versions adding a suffix to one version with the conflict date for later revision.Telstra Next G USB Ultimate Card on Liberty 1GB – $20/month as Telstra landline customerI used to make do with tethering my iPhone to my netbook which is not always convenient and also, being with Three, the speed is at best average. Telstra gave us a pretty good deal which is available to most home line customers, 1GB a month with a free modem on the 24 month plan. So far have been very impressed with speed and get great coverage which was also important for me. I do have an internal 3G modem on the netbook but haven’t managed to get this working yet, but the USB modem works more than well enough. 1GB is also plenty for emailing and updating of files, and again nobody can match Telstra for coverage. A great addition from Telstra with this is no excess usage charges. The account is simply capped at around 64Kb once the limit is reached which I prefer much more than being charged those insanely overpriced excess charges. Also even at the capped speed it’s still fine for surfing and using emails.iPhone – Three Telecom $100/month unlimited calls, voicemail, text, 4GB dataDespite all the Apple marketing I really don’t care for brands. I care about price, functionality, quality, and how it can help me. The iPhone really does assist me on the road making some tasks so intuitive. When a website enquiry comes through I can simply click on the number and it calls that person straight away. Maybe in 2011 that isn’t so impressive but I am still amazed the amount of phones that lack this feature or at least don’t make it as easy. The various apps are handy too as I also use the Drop Box app, and easily handle my Google Apps email with ease like a proper Exchange server. I actually find it easier to sort emails on my phone than on my netbook as I can sort them as they come in instead of going through a bulging inbox at the end of the day. Google App – business Edition $50 per user box per year 25GB per userBeing a Microsoft Business Partner we receive software licenses and so wouldn’t be too hard or expensive to setup our own Exchange server. We chose to go with Google Apps business edition and have never looked back. The speed is great easily seeing changes made on my phone appear on my netbook very fast, and also on my netbook not having to worry about changing outgoing mail servers is welcoming. I also like the fact I can easily log in via webmail and see what the reception and office general email boxes are going and see any emails staff haven’t actioned. The best thing I love as well is our entire email system is easily backed up and redundant at all times. Between this and drop box our business is almost full proof data wise from a disaster event. For those who ask what would we do though if Google suddenly disappeared over night? We use Outlook so as well have local OST files which is sort of a local cached backup of all emails as well. One last thing on Gmail, the junk email filtering is the best I have come across including some of the $500+ Exchange server side software packages that are available. SummaryThat’s most of the main tools covered. The best thing is too a lot of these aren’t that expensive and are easily setup. The best thing we have found is cutting out the need to double handle data and also easily roll this into cloud backup for mission critical data. Additionally as all our devices are syncing together there’s also the convenience of replication across the business when changes are made further cutting out data handling requirements and keeping everyone up to date. Essentially making the world your office and not your world the office will pay itself back repeatedly.Liking to write about modern and future personal tech and helping out when things go bad. Great prices onNew Laptops

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