All the recent talk about tablet computers and digital pens has reminded me of one particular group of software applications that works really well with these products. That group is the applications known as digital notebooks, which provide ways to collect, store and find information quickly and easily.

My particular favourite, at least on windows is an application called EverNote. I presently use the free version of this software which lets you to capture and search through notes, photos, webpage clips, images of printed and handwritten text, emails, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, …… well you get the idea!

As we mentioned above the one thing these applications really must do well is allow you to easily find things again later and I particularly like the way EverNote does this. It provides a combination of a time line ribbon strip, text search and auto and manual tagging approaches which is really quite powerful.

On the Microsoft bench there is OneNote 2007 which provides similar functionality. I have been looking at this product, as it is a possible candidate to use as a digital notebook when my laptop gets its Office 2007 upgrade. It seems functional enough, and the link with Office may make a change worthwhile.

What do you use for a digital notebook?

Everyone agrees that data and information security is a very important. Though of course there will always be different views on who is responsible for the security of a certain piece of information. There will then be further diverging views on how that information should be physically or digitally secured.

Most people you ask, would agree that the UK government is extremely bad at look after important information in its care. Especially, it seems if that data and information relates to me and you the general public. The latest fiascos with the loss of the names, addresses and bank account details related to the child benefit allowances, and the continuing losses of Ministry of Defence laptops certainly seems to confirm that thought.

So what about your own laptop? Are you carrying around a lot of your own personal data on your laptop? If so I have a number of questions for you. Do you have a regular backup of all your data? Do you encrypt your personal data? And are you very careful about leaving your laptop lying around unsecured even for a second? Few people can afford to lose their data and expensive laptop and as I travel and work a lot in many offices I have become quite fanatical about using my security cable at all times. Kensington produce a twin lock cable which I find really useful. Are you locking up your laptop, or are you looking for a position with the MOD?

Do you have a personal process for time management and do you use certain time management tools to help you? I don’t know about you, but I have always struggled in this area. I might be able to get a system of sorts working in a certain way, maybe with a nice tool to support the process. But sooner or later the system always seems to break down, either due to the process being too time consuming to cope with the real world, or more likely due to my own failings in terms of an ability to stick with it.

Over time I have come to the conclusion that time management really only works for the people who are already wired to be good at time management, and not the people who really need the help! I still keep on trying new systems though! Digital pens sit in the same sort of category. They are really only useful for people who are already very good at taking notes. Owning a digital pen is not going to turn you into a good note taker. So for me not really something that would be useful.

Until recently digital pens relied on tablets or at best specially designed notebooks. The best of these is the Logitech IO2 digital pen, of which I have heard a number of good reports. This system is one that requires you to purchase reasonably inexpensive smart notepads in which to take your notes. However there are a number of devices under development and due for release shortly that have caught my eye. These will be able to take digital notes, even when writing in a normal paper notebook or on a scrap of paper! When these are released I am planning on taking the plunge. In the meantime I am trying to bring more order to my present note taking, with the perhaps vain hope that in the future a digital pen will have something to make sense of!

I have always been a little bit skeptical about the value of tablet PC’s. They didn’t seem to me to provide any significant extra value, over a conventional laptop. I think that this was largely due to my feeling or perception that features like the handwriting technology really just were not ready for prime time.

Now however I think things are changing. The time is right for a big growth in the popularity of this sub segment of the PC market. The capability of the hand written recognition software is improving rapidly and as touch screens become more pervasive I can see more applications being developed that really add value.

Presently there are tablet PC’s available from most hardware vendors. These generally all run Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, which provides all the functionality you would require. If you are the do it yourself type you can always run Linux on most of the available tablets on the market today.

Some of the most popular tablets are the HP Compaq Tablet PC TC4400 and the Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook P1610

What is it about the need for the latest and greatest? For a significant number of people there seems to be an overwhelming need to have the latest biggest, faster and the most powerful version of whatever is important to them in their life. You see this in people‘s relationships with their cars, boats, gadgets and yes of course their computers.

So how does this need for speed manifest itself when applied to computers? Well it can be through a need to have the latest laptop. Some Mac fans will probably fall into this category for instance, people who will have queued through the night to buy the iPhone, and probably have the MacBook Air on order already. In other people it will be the need to upgrade or “pimp” their PC with the fastest CPU available or the fastest video cards, soon after they become available. Gamers will often be in this camp, and for good reason, since as we saw when looking at gaming rigs, both the video card and the CPU are very important in driving performance.

Interestingly if you look at the some of the most popular and highly rated computer products on PriceGrabber they are CPU’s like the highly rated Intel Core 2 Duo Quad Processor. Now I wouldn’t mind having that under my computer’s bonnet.

In the last post we talked about the tactic of searching for available WiFi while on the road and looked at a tool to help with that. But there is a wireless alternative to WiFi, and that of course is through utilising the mobile networks.

3G vs. WiFi

If you need a reliable connection and you need it from just about anywhere not just your favourite coffee shop, then WiFi is not really going to cut it. You will spend more time searching around for a connection than you will actually doing anything online. A more reliable approach that will work from just about anywhere including on the commuter train for instance is the mobile data services.

Just plug a 3G card such as the 3G-Gprs Vodafone Mobile Connect Card into the card slot of your laptop and you are online and good to go. In most cases it will be as simple as that. 3G will give you and bandwidth of five or so times the bandwidth you can expect from a dial up connection. While this will general not give you the bandwidth you would get from a WiFi connection back in your favourite coffee shop, it will normally be perfectly adequate. Even in the worst cases where you loose 3G, the card will fall back to Gprs which will still effectively support your ability to read email.

Continuing the theme of travel with a laptop, what has become your standard method of obtaining Internet access?

The old and new

For myself, in the bad old days it was a tedious process of finding a suitable telephone line to enable dial up access. This was often a difficult mix of trying to find the right socket adapter for whatever country you happened to be in and trying to get your modem to work. Once all that was sorted out there was still the matter of the line cost, which if you were in a hotel could often be quite substantial. Move forward a few years and things have improved; we are no longer tied to land based phone lines. In fact I can’t remember the last time I resorted to dial up to read my email, if I had to I probably just wouldn’t bother at all.

Broadband access

Now we will generally have a choice of wired or wireless broadband access and data services through a mobile phone network. Which is of course a big improvement, but what about the cost? Here things are not so different. With very few exceptions as a business traveler you will still be charged high rates for Internet access, and mobile data services costs will always mount up. However there is one thing that has changed all that, and that is the relatively wide availability of free or inexpensive WiFi which can often be found even in the most unlikely of places. Lots of establishments around the world such as pubs and coffee shops now provide free WiFi access, and there is often free WiFi schemes set up by local groups.

Finding WiFi access

The trick is of course to find the available access points, and if you can manage this without booting up the laptop so much the better. One tool I have found invaluable for this sort of thing is the Hawking Tech. HWL2 Hi-Gain WiFi Locator, which works really well and will even boost weak signals if used as your adapter.

What is your preferred way to find that elusive WiFi signal? If you don’t use WiFi what is your preferred method of getting on line while traveling?

If you have a Windows laptop with a good sized hard disk drive like me, you may have opted for splitting your disk drive into a number of different partitions. When you partition your hard drive you are essentially creating a number of independent hard drives on your computer. So instead of a just a C: drive you can have a C: and D: drive and perhaps even more drives on your computer. These partitions act like completely separate disks but the main difference to actual separate hard disks is that partitions share their hardware (and therefore any potential failures so backup is still very important).

Now why would you want to partition your hard drive? Well there are a number of good reasons a few of which I have listed below;

- Separating and isolating specific files, to make it easier to recover or back up an important data set.
- Maintaining good computer performance, smaller file systems are generally more efficient. i.e. Having one huge C: drive will potentially slow a system down especially when full.
- For the geeks it provides the ability to have a number of different operating systems on the same computer. You could install Linux on one partition (so it doesn’t conflict with Windows) and have the choice of booting into Linux at power-up.
- Provides a high level means to organize data, you could have separate partitions dedicated to documents, music, photos, email etc.

Partitions are becoming more important as we all get larger and larger hard drives. I have a separate C: and D: drive. On the C: drive I have all the operating system files, program files etc., while on the D: drive I have all my data. One reason for this is that I can point my data backup up at just the D: drive and not include all the system files as well, making it more efficient.

So maybe you’re sold on partitions and want to create your own? Well the best program that I have found for this is the excellent and aptly named Partition Magic, which will allow you to create, merge and delete partitions to your hearts content. Always do a backup before though to be on the safe side.

I mentioned in my last post that when traveling with my laptop, I like to carry a small travel mouse. Now a mouse can be especially useful for playing games. I don’t know about you, but I don’t often have enough time on my hands to play a gams. But on the odd occasion when I am at a loose end, and the motivation to do something constructive is low, I do like to have a go at something a bit more challenging than Solitaire or Minefield.

So what is the best game for the gaming “Road Warrior”? Of course as I only have a laptop that is beginning to show its age and not being equipped with a blazing fast desktop complete with the latest video card, I will obviously not be playing the very latest first person shooter. I think the answer is probably quite personal as it will depend a little on what you want from your game. In my case I look for something that has engaging game play, requires me to think a bit, thats not too repetitive while at the same time providing a bit of action. Also as I only play now and again the game must either be short or easy to save and come back to later.

So what game is the right horse for my particular laptop? Well in my view it is Civilization IV, which will just about run on my most recent laptop. (On older laptops I still run Civilization III, which doesn’t require nearly as much graphics power). I think the beauty of “Civ” is that it gives you nearly everything on my wish list, and while you wouldn’t call it an action game there is always enough trouble with the neighbours to keep things interesting. If there is a drawback it is that the games do tend to be very long, often around 24 hours game time, which in elapsed or real time for me can be anything up to a year! Just watch it though it can be addictive and can become trapped in “just one more go” mode and before you realize it hours have passed!

So what in your opinion is the best laptop game?

One thing that I have learned over the years as a computer user is that a good set of interface tools is a very important to ensure a pleasant, comfortable and even safe computer experience. This can be especially true if you, like me, are on the road a lot and trying to minimize the additional clutter you have to carry with you.

One example of a user interface device that can cause problems on road is the standard laptop trackpad. A lot of people who use laptops have never really become comfortable with using a trackpad on a full time basis. I actually prefer using the now very much out of fashion pointing stick that used to be standard on the old IBM ThinkPads. This is one reason why I like the Dell Latitude models such as the Latitude D630 which come with a choice of both a trackpad and a stick, but I digress.

As a result of this discomfort with a trackpad, a lot of people take to carrying around a mouse to use when on the road with their laptop. I used to be one of them, but got really fed up with carrying one around, and forced myself to use the onboard tools. However these days there are a lot of very neat small sized mice available on the market. Take the NB Optical Mouse from Targus, it has a neatly managed cable and is small enough to fit in most people’s bags, without being so small that it is uncomfortable to use.

I have one now, and as well as being a great tool for long periods of laptop use, it is of course far superior to a trackpad for the odd game of Civilization!