I wanted to post some tips I have used while being mobile, even though I’m not as mobile as I used to be, these still come in handy when you have to take your office on the road.

  1. Make sure you have your chargers.  That might seem obvious, but how many times have you forgotten your battery charger whether it’s for your phone or laptop?  Being somewhere without a way to charge, and watching that battery icon get lower and lower is not fun, nor is it productive.
  2. Use the Cloud.  Lots of us are using smaller PC’s like Netbooks, and some of these don’t have nowhere near the hard disk space our desktops have.  To save on space I use services like SkyDrive and Dropbox to store files in “the cloud” so I can retrieve them anywhere with a net connection. 
  3. Keep Your Desktop Organized.  Don’t clutter your Windows desktop with tons of icons and folders.  Make your desktop as clean as possible, so you don’t spend time wading through junk just to find the files you need.  Use an application like Fences to wrangle the icons on your desktop.
  4. Scout your locations.  Depending on what your day holds, if you don’t have a wireless broadband card, make sure to get online and scout out wireless zones near the places you will be at.  Being prepared ahead of time is much easier than scrambling to find a wireless hotspot somewhere.

These are just a few of my tips when being mobile.  I hope they help make you a bit more productive.


Comments
on Mar 18, 2010

I also include a dc invertor in case I get caught on a long rode trip or need to recharge between locations.

I also purchased a mifi for mobile wireless. It's a great device that allows up to 5 computers to connect to the wireless broadband connection. Great when you have peers that don't have their own wireless broadband yet and there is not available hotspot. It does have a battery for a few hours of unplugged use, but don't forget your charger for it too.

 

on Mar 18, 2010

I heard those mifi's are pretty cool.