I'm a pretty mobile worker. In an average week I probably work 2.5 days from my home office, 1.5 days at client offices and 1 day at the office of a software development company I work with as an associate. On top of this is the time I spend travelling, about half of which is by car and half by train (this is the UK so business people actually use the train). Occasionally I also do some air travel to Europe.
I quite enjoy the travel but all this mobility does have one problem - I am away from my desk quite a bit - and that means I am away from my computer, my files and all the other stuff you get used to having around you in a fixed office space. To overcome this problem I have my own mobile office - and that comprises is the subject of this post!
A few months ago my mobile office looked liked Photo A but today it looks like Photo B.
What's changed? Well the iPhone has made a big difference. Gone is the Dell Axim PDA and the iRiver MP3 player. However because the Sony Eriksson 850i had such a good camera I have had to re-introduce a digital camera (an Olympus Mju 1050). My laptop has grown in size to a Dell Studio 15 (I do miss the compactness of the Vaio 13.3 screen) but the extra screen real estate is an improvement (especially as I am used to a Samsung 24 inch on my 'proper desk'). I also carry a portable back-up drive (with password security). This is a full back-up of all the stuff on my office PC. The London A-Z has also gone (the iPhone now gets me to tricky to find client offices in London). I still carry it all around in my old 'doctor's' black leather case. I bought this in Copenhagen over 25 years ago and I love it because you can access your stuff while the case stands on the ground. A colleague of mine recognised the type of briefcase a few years ago and you can get them in the UK (seelink). The whole lot does weigh quite a bit, especially if you include the necessary chargers though in practice the only charger I need to carry of short trips is the one for the laptop.
As I wrote in an earlier post I am considering buying a netbook to lighten the load when I don't need the power of the Dell Studio. The Samsung NC10 looks like a good option here because it is much lighter than the Dell Studio and because of the 8 hour battery life I could do short trips without needing the charger (a double bonus in weight saving therefore).
So, that's about it for my hardware. What about software? Well I run Microsoft Office on both the Office and Laptop PCs but there are some interesting solutions for keeping things accessible on both machines. I'll cover these in another article soon.
It's December 31st 2008 so Happy New Year. 2009 looks like a bad year for those of us running a business - let's hope it won't be as bad as some of the pessimists make out!