BackPack Essentials

For the Geek on the go, there are essentials that you need! Last year Tech Tips covered some of these essentials with “Must-Have Tech Gear To Maximize Productivity Outside The Office”. In this week’s Tech Tip, we are going to cover some of the essentials to carry in your laptop bag as well as offering some guidance for picking the right laptop bag for your life on the go.

The most basic essential

Choosing just the right laptop carrying case could be called getting the most basic essential accessory for your laptop. While there is a wide array to choose from, you can narrow down your search by thinking about how you’ll use your bag. If you are a student, then perhaps a laptop backpack would be your style. Is it essential to protect your laptop from unforeseen accidents, then maybe an aluminum notebook case would be your style. Do you just need your laptop lightly protected but easy to carry? Then look at one of the sleeve options. There is also the basic laptop bag – inexpensive, easy to carry and stow away, but that gives your laptop good protection. These come in a variety of materials, from simple nylon to nicely appointed leather. For the traveling set, there are upgraded luggage type bags – complete with wheels and travel handle as well as TSA approved bags for the jet setting Geek.

Whatever bag you get, be sure that it fits your needs. Is it large enough for your laptop (or perhaps too big?). Will it fit all the extra goodies that you want to bring along? If you have an eBook reader or tablet, does it have a special compartment that can easily accommodate and protect this device as well? Does it include accessories such as a shoulder strap, or it is lockable? All these need to be considered for getting “just the right bag.”

Some more obvious essentials

Some of the more obvious essentials to have include three mentioned in the Must-Have Tech Tip as well as a few others:

1. Mouse with nano receiver.
2. USB flash drive.
3. Power strip.

In addition to those essentials, some others would be:

1. Presentation pointer (some mice, such asHP Bluetooth credit card mouse, have a built in presenter).
2. Mini Bluetooth module (if your laptop doesn’t already have Bluetooth).
3. 3G or 4G modem (if your laptop doesn’t have built in 3G) or in lieu of that:
4. A cell phone device that acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot (such as Verizon’s MiFi service). This is a great service to have on long road trips where there may be multiple devices that can connect to the Internet.
5. Noise canceling headphones – be sure that you get one thateasily folds down for traveling.

Some less obvious essentials to have in your laptop bag are:

1. Identification (like a business card) in case your bag is lost.
2. Some kind of tracking software on your laptop (much like BlackBerry’s Protect or Apple’s Location services for iPhone/iPad). There are software options that can be used to help locate a misplaced or stolen laptop (such as Lojack for Laptops).
3. Spare battery (but not if you are planning to fly).
4. Automobile cigarette lighter DC power cable for laptops or automobile power inverter (also great for long trips).
5. Laptop travel mat – some kind of surface that allows the laptop to stay put but keep the fans clear and the heat away from you.
6. Essential cables. Think how you are going to use your laptop – are you going to need a cable to connect to a projector or HDTV. Will you need a cable to connect your camcorder or cell phone? Will you be staying at a hotel that only offers wired Internet, and need an Ethernet cable? All things to think about when looking for items to include in your case.
7. Cleaning cloth for the screen (even if it is not a touchscreen). Be sure that you get one that is safe for LCD screens.

In conclusion

There are a myriad of essentials and must-haves that you can get for your laptop bag. With this Tech Tip we have looked at the bag itself, some of the must-have essentials to the not so obvious essentials. We encourage you to plan ahead when traveling with it and we hope that this Tech Tip helps gives you some good ideas on what essentials you’d most like to have in your laptop bag.

iPhone 4

What Makes iPhone 4 great!

iPhone 4G

On Monday, Apple officially unveiled the iPhone 4. After playing around with it for 20 minutes or so after the keynote, I can safely say that it’s the most impressive mobile device I’ve ever seen. But plenty of people (many of which have never used the phone) disagree. Their arguments are mainly predicated on what Apple didn’t include rather than what it did. But what those people fail to understand is that this is exactly what makes the new iPhone (as well as the previous iterations) so solid.

iPhone 4 Say Hello Again

During his keynote address on Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that while Apple may not be the first to release features, they do so in a way that’s the best implementation. Many people view this as absolute bullshit. But what that implies is that they think Apple simply cannot get features done in time — or that they will not do them for some reason. I have a hard time believing either of those is the case.

Jobs cited the iPhone’s cut, copy, & paste functionality as one example of Apple getting a feature right. I have to agree. For two years, everyone complained (myself included) that Apple didn’t have this functionality. Could Apple have done it sooner? Of course. But would it have been half-baked? Probably. Just look at how it works on other devices — or maybe I should say: look at howpoorly it works on other devices compared to the iPhone. Most Android phones want you to use that damn ball to select text. Or worse, those arrow buttons at the bottom of the EVO’s horrid keyboard. It’s a nightmare.

Another popular example is background tasks (or multitasking). This feature is finally coming to the new iOS 4 after being on other devices for a few years. So was Apple dragging its feet out of incompetence? Or were they being stubborn? In their view, they were waiting to perfect the system that would not destroy battery life. Android’s background method is supposedly similar to what Apple will use, but it has issues.

Most people haven’t yet seen third-party apps running in the background with iOS, so it’s hard to know exactly how well Apple has done here. (And I only got to play around with one app, Pandora, running in the background for a few minutes.) But a few developers I’ve talked to who have used the system say it’s by far the best combination of functionality and battery-saving techniques that they’ve seen. One told me that it basically doesn’t ding battery life at all.

iPhone 4G makes other phones look cheap

With 4G, by all accounts, the battery ding is even worse. Also, 4G is still slowly deploying around the country, and some carriers  won’t have it really deployed for a long, long time. In other words, don’t be surprised if next year Apple still doesn’t have a 4G version of the device. Everyone will bitch about it, but in Apple’s view, it likely just won’t be worth it yet.

Another feature brought up is over-the-air (OTA) updates. While eWeek seems to specifically be talking about OTA firmware updates (does anyone really care about that so much?), the more pressing issue is the ability to sync things wirelessly on your iPhone. Currently, you can only truly do that with certain MobileMe elements (like Calendar, Contacts, etc). But over-the-air syncing of things like apps and music wasn’t in iOS yet.

This is a fair point both because it would be very useful, and because it’s baked into the latest version of Android, 2.2. But we have yet to see exactly how well this system with work with Android 2.2. The on-stage demos at Google I/O were impressive, but it probably wouldn’t have been made into a demo if it weren’t. The proof will be in the real-world usage of this feature.

Apple is clearly thinking about how best to do this as well. Jobs said as much during the D Conference a few weeks ago, and Apple has even blocked applications that do something similar (a sign that they’re likely working on it — and that they don’t want third parties touching the iTunes/iPhone sync interaction). Make no mistake: this feature will be coming to the iPhone. And I would bet it will be here next year. And if Apple is able to get its iTunes-in-the-cloud service off the ground in time, it could be a lot easier than people are thinking right now.

The point to all of this is that one of the things that makes the iPhone great is that Apple is so deliberate and meticulous in the features they choose to focus on and implement. Could Apple include more features? Of course. But anytime you try to do more, you take focus away from the key things you want to get done. It’s something that’s so obvious it almost needs to be restated.

It’s the same reason why startups that focus on creating as many features as possible often fare worse than those that focus on a few key ideas. The ones that keep it simple are able to execute much better. Apple (which likes to think of itself as the “world’s biggest startup”) is no different, and the iPhone is a testament to that
.