One of my favorite Christmas gifts for Vickie in 2011 was a Hercules X-Stand Ergonomic Portable Natural Airflow Cooling Stand (trust me, that’s a sexy gift coming from a tech-geek). Vickie lugs her laptop with her to all of our CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars, vacations, business trips and our annual Christmas Migration. When she’s sitting at a hotel desk or table working away, the laptop gets hot. At home her computer’s dock helps prop it up for proper ventilation, but on the road it lies flatter and hotter than a stretch of West Texas highway in the summer. Hotter running temperatures lead to hardware fatigue and my CLNC^® amigos all know there’s nothing worse than hardware fatigue.

But, the Hercules X-Stand doesn’t just provide adequate space for airflow underneath and around the laptop, it elevates it slightly to give Vickie a better typing angle (to help ward off carpool and tunnel syndrome) and viewing angle. It’s small, portable (you should have gotten that from the name) and folds up nicely to fit in our Mobile Max rolling computer bag.

This may not be everyone’s idea of the ideal Christmas gift, but it did put a smile on Vickie’s face (plus she got some other really cool stuff too). Buy one for the traveling geek, I mean Certified Legal Nurse Consultant in your family (I did), and I guarantee she’ll like it (she did).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Vickie and I were flying home from New York City after Vickie’s appearance on Fox & Friends. As usual, we were crunching away against a deadline. Our keyboards were blazing, fingers were flying and when we got to the point where we wanted to start highlighting some text in the document we were editing, I reached for my mouse, then remembered “Tom, you’re on an airplane and your mouse is packed in baggage.” My fingers drifted towards my touchpad, then remembered “Tom, you disabled your touchpad so that you wouldn’t drop your thumbs on it and move the cursor while you’re typing.” Finally, I thought about using the keyboard’s pointing stick but, it’s a terrible mouse alternative and tends to hop around when I use it so I dropped that idea.

As I was contemplating my next move, Vickie came to my rescue – she reached over, moved my cursor to the start of my text and told me to hold down the Shift key and then hit the right or down arrow and watch it select text. Amazing! It selected all the text I wanted and when I was done, I left-clicked the yellow highlighter and I was done ahead of the deadline.

My takeaway: if you want a quick, non-mouse way to select text for highlighting, cutting or copying, simply start with your cursor at the front or back of the text you want to select, hold down your Shift key and then arrow up, down or sideways until the text is selected. Then you can copy, cut, italicize or do whatever else you need.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Living in Houston has its advantages and disadvantages (think world-class dining versus world-class mosquitoes). One of the biggest advantages used to be the ability to hop onto a Continental flight and go just about anywhere non-stop. With the merger of Continental and United, that’s not as true. Sure, Houston is still a main hub with flight to lots of fun places, but now we’ve got to fly United to get there from here. Airlines are one of the few industries that keep getting worse instead of better and United is proof.

In any event, Vickie always tells me to make the best of any situation; so with that in mind we took a chance and flew another carrier to the city of our final destination. I won’t get into the service and seating configuration, but that flight made me yearn for United. I guess the devil you know is better than the one you don’t and the mold is always greener on the other airline’s muffins.

Anyway, on the “other” airline I was pleasantly surprised to find that they offered Internet access. I’ve long longed for access to the ‘Net whilst airborne and here it was presented to me for a simple fee of $9.95 for the entire flight. I don’t know about Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, but as much as I love the quiet time of a flight (Lord, please don’t let smartphone users figure out how to make Skype^® calls over the airline Internet). I also need the Internet to back up or research what I’m writing about and suddenly I had that ability (sort of).

Bottom line for my CLNC^® amigos, if you take to the air and have the chance or need for ’Net access and your airline of choice offers you the opportunity, take it. So long as you’re running applications that don’t soak up a lot of data transfer you should be fine. Good old-fashioned Web research and email are fine, but I noticed that Outlook ran very slowly due in part to the large volume of data Outlook^® synchronizes with our Exchange server. Vickie found Facebook^® to be somewhat painful but manageably so. I don’t use Google^® Docs or Microsoft^® Office 365, but I imagine that “cloud-based” apps would be pretty slow as would watching YouTube^® videos or streaming Pandora^® music. I was able to retrieve a document from the Vickie Milazzo Institute network and, while it took almost five minutes, I was able to work on it once it finally downloaded (and it took just as long to save it back to our server).

The takeaway for busy CLNC^® consultants is that if you need to work on an airplane, plan ahead. Inflight Internet access is great but its utility for your legal nurse consulting business has limits. One recommendation – disable or don’t plan on using any applications that “report in” or exchange data in the background, such as iTunes^® or DropBox^®. Don’t try to stream anything that’s not a body fluid, and if you’re going to need a large document, image or file, it’s better to take it with you than try and pull it from your home network or the “cloud.”  If you’re simply writing reports or correspondence for your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business and attorney-clients, you’ll be fine. One final warning – airline Internet service is probably as secure as the network in a Starbucks^® or McDonalds^® so if you’re pulling up sensitive information use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for protection, either your own or a free service such as CyberGhost.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

As long as there’s been email, there have been discussions – often heated – over whether or not it’s appropriate to use an email auto-responder. If you don’t know what that is, think of it as an automatic response that goes to each person who sends you an email. I’m sure you’ve been the recipient of the most common form “Hi, I’m out of the office backpacking in southern Sudan and don’t expect to return until September 31st. If this requires an urgent response, please contact, blah, blah, blah.” Most people use these to indicate they’ll be out of the office for some reason (like a vacation or boondoggle to Paducah) and won’t be responding to email.

Auto-responders are fairly ubiquitous, easy to set up and they annoy me to all get-out. In today’s always connected, Internet-everywhere, handheld world, it’s pretty hard for a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to go without email unless you leave the country (and sometimes not even then). Most CLNC^® consultants I know have a smartphone and can’t resist checking email, even when on vacation, in traffic or on their back, intubated in the ICU. This type of connectivity makes the whole auto-responder issue moot in my opinion (we can run, but we can’t hide from email).

However, some people still feel that advertising your absence via an email auto-response is like asking to be robbed. Do I believe that? No. Why? I don’t know about you, but I don’t get much email from prospective burglars checking whether or not I’m in town before they drop by. Letting your newspapers stack up or not having a light or two on an automatic timer is more of a signal to thieves than your auto-responder. (One word of common sense – don’t advertise on Facebook that you’re on vacation, unless your privacy settings only allow your friends to see your status updates).

So, the question remains, should a CLNC^® consultant use an auto-responder for her legal nurse consulting business when she’s, heaven forbid, away from her email? My recommendation is an unequivocal “it depends.” If you can limit it to just people in your contacts list then do so.

It also depends on what type of email service you’re using and whether or not you can set up an auto-responder (should you decide to use one). Here’s how to set up an auto-responder if you’re using webmail such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Windows Live. If you’re using Outlook and your legal nurse consulting business or other firm is using an Exchange server, click here to learn how to set it up. However if you’re using Outlook without an Exchange server to download and read your email, it’ll be a much more difficult issue and you’ll have to search the web for a solution (sorry).

So, if you can’t limit it or it’s not easy to set up, I say no, don’t use one.

Vickie’s never used an auto-responder, no matter where or how long she’s traveled. I asked Vickie why and her response was “the people who matter always know how to find me.” Vickie also stresses that you should be communicating with your important attorney-clients well in advance, and if you will truly be unavailable, let them know that one of the CLNC^® subcontractors in your CLNC^® alliance is available in case of an emergency (don’t skip that step).

Okay my CLNC^® amigos, that’s today’s Tech Tip. Next time you email me and get an instant response that says, “I’m in the office this week but not responding to email,” you’ll know I’ve broken down and set up my own auto-responder.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

When I’m at home, I love being home. There’s nothing better than sleeping in my own bed and enjoying a cup of healthy green tea with my bamboo clicking away outside.

I’m on the road for 9-10 weeks a year for business, and I try to find something to enjoy in each city I visit. Sometimes it’s going back to a favored restaurant or discovering a new “favorite,” visiting with a friend or just taking a walk in a botanical garden after working inside all day at one of our CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars.

When I’m on the East Coast, my business day ends later because my office is an hour behind. Instead of focusing on the late night I’m going to have, I focus on enjoying the extra hour of quiet I’ll get in the morning before my office comes alive, my iPhone starts ringing off the table and the email starts flooding in.

When I’m on the West Coast, my business day starts earlier. Instead of focusing on the fact that my office will start looking for me at 6:00am, I focus on the quiet time I will get at the end of my business day when the office has been long closed. With everyone gone for the day and offline, I have uninterrupted time to go out with speakers and friends, to enjoy dinner, laughter and a healthy glass of red wine together.

I have a love/hate relationship with air travel, an industry that just keeps getting worse. Don’t get me started on airline service, airport food or the TSA pat-downs – I don’t have space in this blog. But when I’m finally in the air where no one can disturb me, I put on my Bose^® headset, play some music on my iPod^®, pop open my laptop and get deep into the rare and cherished uninterrupted work time.

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who look for the good in every situation, look past any perceived difficulties and look for the silver lining are not only the happiest, they’re also the most successful. Sure, you can focus on the five outstanding, urgent voicemails waiting for you while deadlines loom large, or you can take an optimistic view and see where that takes you. Building tolerance for less than optimal situations builds upon your strength of endurance.

Attorneys come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s only natural that you’ll have favorites and not-so-favorites. When I mentor a CLNC^® consultant who is complaining about an attorney, I’ll counsel that CLNC^® consultant to enjoy the challenge or to find something positive about the attorney and to focus on that trait instead. Sometimes it may be more difficult to find that positive trait than other times, but in the end it will be worth it for your mental health and your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business. I’m sure you know the saying “Wherever you go, there you are.” You may as well be happy both along the way and when you get to your final destination.

Success Is Inside!

On our vacation to Provence, I consciously left my iPhone^® at home. That sounds good and healthy, right? Well it did feel good and healthy right up until the time I stepped off the airplane in Paris and reached into my purse for my phone. Nothing there. Momentary tachycardia, like when you can’t find your wallet, car keys or wedding ring (Where was I last night?). I remembered the phone was at home, took a few deep breaths and headed to passport control.

Standing in line at passport control and later in customs there are big multilingual signs, “no cellphone use”. No problem, even though I don’t like to be told what I can and cannot do. It was a different story in the car ride to the hotel, in the Paris subways and on the TGV to Provence. When I sit in a car, I usually take advantage of that time to catch up with my office and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. It was only natural that when every other Frenchwoman or man pulled out their cellphone to text, Facebook or check their make-up, I unconsciously and enviously reached for my own phone. It’s an involuntary reaction, much like breathing. When I have a bit of free time I grab the iPhone, check email, check Facebook and check email again (just in case).

It took a couple of days, but I soon calmed down and joined fully with the slow life of Provence. Walking from village to village, eating lunch outside in a small café or having an aperitif on the terrace before dinner, I forgot the iPhone. Even the urge to call family or friends left. I was free to enjoy my vacation, and enjoy I did! Although one day the combination of a French baguette, Époisses cheese and a healthy glass of great Bordeaux wine almost had me ready to tweet!

I heartily recommend that all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants take a temporary vacation from your phones. Your mental health might suffer at first, but then it will magically soar. Take a moment, put down the phone, pick up a baguette, some cheese and a glass of French red – you’ll thank me later.

Success Is Inside!

Vickie and I travel a lot, so I’m always on the lookout for travel apps. I’ve come across some great apps that legal nurse consultants can use everywhere from Paris to Poughkeepsie and, with the exception of XE, I use all of these right in my hometown. Most of these are free and I’ve indicated where they’re available for iPhone^®, Windows^® Phone 7, Blackberry^® and Android^® users.

Here’s six of my favorite travel apps.

1. XE Currency Converter: A FREE app that quickly converts one currency to another. You select the currencies you want to track. It can tell you what an individual Swedish Kroner is worth in U.S. dollars or, if you type in the amount of a meal in Kroners it’ll tell you how much that Swedish meatball costs in your home currency. I love this app! Available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. There’s no Win Phone 7 version, but it does have a mobile site you can access. Get your copy at XE.com.
2. iTranslate: A FREE app that will quickly translate short phrases from one language to another. I learned about this from a friend who uses it to insult his buddies in their native language (Men and their toys!) I find it keeps me from ordering the sea urchin off the sushi menu in Japan. It doesn’t translate Klingon yet so I can’t use it to connect with our techies. Available for iPhone, Android and even Blackberry. Get your copy from your phone’s app store.
3. Yelp! This is a crazy little FREE app that, once it locates you, will help you find just about anything nearby – gas stations, banks, restaurants, etc. My favorite part is it rates restaurants with user reviews and tips. It works overseas also. Thanks to one of the CLNC^® Mentors for tipping me off about this app. You can use Yelp! without registering for their community. Available for iPhone, Win Phone 7, Android and even Blackberry. Get your copy at Yelp.com and you’ll have the world at your fingertips.
4. Zagat: Zagat is a ratings community for restaurants, hotels, bars, etc. It’s a little more elitist and a little less populist than Yelp! It doesn’t help with gas, banks, etc., but I find that I generally agree more with Zagat when it comes to food and I’ve used their web-based service to make advance reservations nationally and internationally. There is a cost to use the website and app, but it is well worth it. Available for iPhone, Win Phone 7, Android and even Blackberry. Register or get your copy at Zagat.com. This will keep you from taking your favorite attorney-client out for a bad bowl of Tom Yum.
5. Google Maps: FREE in exchange for your soul. Google already knows everything about you so extending this to maps helps me find my way to obscure, hole in the wall places. Plug in your destination and it’ll take you there! Probably available for every mobile OS known to man and a few that haven’t been invented yet.
6. Flashlight: FREE from various sources for each of the different mobile platforms. This helps you find your way to the beach at night, your keys in the movie theatre and as an added plus, I can hold up a colored screen and lead Vickie right to me in a dark room (Heh, heh!). It has so many uses that you should drop what you’re doing and get one today. One incidental benefit is that this app can be used to quickly drain your phone’s battery when you need to drop below the threshold level for recharging.

FINE PRINT/CAVEAT: You’ll need to have your location services on to take advantage of most of these apps, data transfer and other hidden costs may apply, blah, blah, blah.

Those are a few of my “can’t live without” apps. How about yours? I’d like to hear from my CLNC^® amigos about their favorite app, travel or otherwise.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I was writing a Tech Tip on a flight home and needed to fact check a statement. I went to open up Firefox^® and was suddenly gripped by the cold realization that I couldn’t access the Net; at least until we were wheels down in Houston and I could activate my wireless card. For that moment, I was disconnected, all alone in the world, and while I wasn’t experiencing withdrawal, I missed the convenience of Googling something of interest for your legal nurse consulting businesses. Continental/United, my airline of lack-of-choice has yet to offer in-flight Internet access. Other more progressive airlines are already doing so, charging an added cost for it like they do for seat cushions, food and restroom access.

While I was feeling the pain of being offline I started wondering, is Internet access on airplanes a good thing? Can we be connected too much or for too long? Is it a good thing to be offline for a little while or is the Internet so much a part of our lives that we can’t live without it, even for that short flight from Bossier City?

I’m sure that Certified Legal Nurse Consultants would agree that there’s no easy answer. I think of it as a double-edged sword. For more than 748,000 miles, airplanes have been a sanctuary for me. Once I’m above the clouds and high over the ground, each flight becomes an opportunity to disconnect from the grid and power out on Big Things. There’s no email to answer, nobody to un-friend, nothing tweeting and no LOLcats to view. As long as the person in front of me doesn’t recline into my lap, some of my greatest creativity comes when I’m airborne. Granted, when I hit the ground and turn on the iPhone^® I pay the price for that freedom. There’s usually one or two urgent voicemails and 25+ emails that need responses, but I can usually get them done before we hit the gate.

Do I need airborne Internet access? Not really. Do I want airborne Internet access? Yes – for fact checking. Do I want others to have it? It depends on what they’re doing. At the end of the day or the beginning of a flight, I’d rather have Internet access than cell phone service on airplanes and therein lies the rub. Once we get Internet, somebody will crack open the Wi-Fi connection on their iPhone and start making Facetime^® calls and that will be the end of my sanctuary.

As I like to say, the future is in front of us and the Internet everywhere is at hand, for better or for worse. Today, I’d like to hear from you. How do you feel about staying connected and about your neighbor next to you talking on his/her cell phone in flight? Would you rather be connected or free? Sound off and let me know (unless you’re in the air).

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, let me paint you a picture of pure bliss. Two weeks in the Piedmonte and Lake Districts of Italy, starting the trip in Milano for a little shopping to get over the jet lag. Good food, great wine, better company (Vickie of course) and no email, iPhone or contact with the outside cyber-world.

Having said that, let me make a confession. Vickie disconnects easier than I do. When we leave the country she leaves it behind. The office can contact her if it’s on fire but otherwise it needs to be of very high importance before they call. Vickie won’t check email because she figures it’ll ruin the vacation. We’ve been around people who walk, head down, through the Sistine Chapel responding to email and don’t get to enjoy the beauty above them.

We don’t go naked though when we leave the country. We have a “dumb” smart phone that we take with us. It’s a pretty good phone, but it isn’t connected to a data plan, it doesn’t play music and it won’t surf the web (I think it might accept text messages but I haven’t tried it) – it’s phone calls only. I will download my calendar so I know what city I’m supposed to be in (if this is Tuesday, this must be Cisterna d’Asti) and my contacts in case I need to call someone back home. Once I do that, we’re off. People can call us, if they know the number, but we won’t be checking email until we return home.

As a wise man once said, “therein lies the rub.” I’ve finally joined the culture of distraction and I had to travel all the way to Italy to realize it. I was standing with the other lost spouses outside of one of Milano’s many fitting rooms when I noticed that I was the only one without a device in my hand. (CAVEAT: an Italian man without a cell phone is an outcast. I’ve never seen an Italian man without at least one cell phone – the average is two on the table at lunch and the most I’ve seen was five.)

So there I was, people looking at me like I was lurking around, up to no good – an obvious vagrant or ne’er-do-well. Noticing that I was left out of the fun, and to salvage my techie reputation, I reached for my phone only to realize that I was reaching for just a phone – not a pocketful of fun. I pulled it out anyway (the phone) and pretended to look up something important (like my flight home).

As the day progressed, I became aware that whenever I had a moment free, my hand would unconsciously drift towards the (useless) phone, a holdover of behavior from home where checking email, text messages and the weather is a national obsession – but not one I realized I shared, until that day.

You’ve heard the saying, “wherever you go, there you are.” There I was, addicted to what I’ve warned others about – distraction and the phantom rattle. For the rest of our days in Milano, I struggled with my problem and bravely mastered it before we left for Piedmonte. I didn’t reach for the phone again until we came home.

Back in the States, though, my behavior altered back again, probably due to my environment. The other night at dinner with Vickie, her twin brother Vince and two of the CLNC^® Mentors, Vince commented how much fun it was to be at a dinner table with four people who were all on their phones at once. He made a good point. We put our phones down and picked up the wine instead.

Devices are wonderful – for staying connected to your legal nurse consulting business while you’re on the road, in the car or at the grocery. Plus there’s following football scores while attending the ballet or just sitting around with good friends at dinner and Facebooking about it in real time. Vickie jokes with me that checking your email under the dinner table is like picking your nose in public (What, me?). None of my CLNC^® amigos would ever want to be seen doing that.

I strongly recommend that all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have a smart phone for their legal nurse consulting business. Just remember, that there’s a time and place for everything and not everywhere is the place and now isn’t always the time.

Keep on techin’,
Tom

Unlike most legal nurse consultants, I’m on the road about 20 weeks a year and that means that I’m on a minimum of 40 flights a year – and it’s usually a lot more counting short hops, vacations, family visits and our CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Seminars across the country. Yes, I do have Gold frequent flyer status on Continental, but all that guarantees me is early boarding and sitting near the front of the plane behind the Platinum and Million-Mile members. I’m close enough to see them up in first class sipping champagne, eating lobster thermidor and generally cavorting about in a carefree manner, at least until the flight attendant pulls the velvet curtain that separates “us” from “them.” I don’t get upgraded to first class as often as I’d like to.

Lately Continental has been stingier with their upgrades and as I write this, I’m sitting in 9C. On this 757-300 (it’s scary that I can tell the aircraft type by the restroom configuration), this means an aisle seat in coach for me. Tom’s in 9A, a window seat, hunkered-down in his favorite don’t-bother-me-please position. Thanks to fewer, more crowded flights, Continental has sentenced us to 3½ hours of false imprisonment (look it up – the only exit is by parachute). Tom’s laptop barely fits on his lap so he’s claiming it’s impossible to type (I think he just wants to read my copy of Outlander). To drown him and everything else out I’ve put on my Bose headset and cranked up “Novacaine” by Green Day on my iPod (thank you Steve Jobs) and, in the words of the song, “For now I won’t feel a thing.”

Of course this will end. Soon they’ll close the cabin door and if I’m lucky, the person who ends up in the middle seat won’t hack up a lung or kidney or won’t be a professional wrestler, like on our last flight (Tom swapped him for the window seat to sit next to me but then Tom was scared to ask the guy to take his huge bald head off his shoulder when he fell asleep). For now I had to listen to the woman in the row in front of me with the cell-phone voice tell her friend about her frightening medical condition (and they worry about nurses and HIPAA) or I can rock out with my iPod and people-watch during the boarding process.

It’s sort of fascinating in the way that it’s fascinating to watch a train wreck. People getting on have all different looks. There are the business people in suits who furtively glance toward first class to see if it’s really full. They next get that look of despair (that I share) after realizing they’re really in the back and that their Double-Platinum Premium card won’t be any help at all. Then come couples of all ages, usually going on vacation. They look happy, in love and it brightens my heart to see them. Like Tom and me, they get to share the experience and tell each other “that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I see the singles who avoid the checked-bag fee by rolling bags the size of a small car onto the aircraft, bouncing them down the aisle and then wrenching their back and shoulders trying to unsuccessfully stuff them into the already full overhead compartment.

Soon families start boarding – they often end up sitting near the back for some reason. You can hear the small children asking, “Is this our seat? Is this our seat? Is this our seat?” until they get all the way back to 96F (by the restroom). Personally, I like to see the children who, unlike the parents, are thrilled and looking forward to the experience of flying (they’ll learn). They still have joy associated with new adventures and will get to experience their parents undivided attention (at least until the in-flight movie begins).

As I watched the parade, Tom was so wrapped up in typing a fresh, new Tech Tip that no less than two surly flight attendants came by to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he was threatening the safety of not only all the other passengers, but possibly the destiny of the free world. This was because he still had his headset, Blackberry^® and laptop on and, if he didn’t want to say hello to the business end of the air marshal’s Sig-Sauer pistol, it was time to shut things down. As luck would have it, at that exact moment, my own cell phone rang with a call from the one person I really needed to talk to so I answered it. This put me, but not Tom, on the watch list for the next three hours. As a consequence, not only did I not get my four ounces of TSA-approved fluids but I did get special “inattention.” In other words, the flight crew overtly watched me, but assiduously avoided making eye contact in case I needed something.

I can deal with that. I’m a nurse, I’m self-sufficient. I travel with teapot, table and tent. I’ve got water, snacks, my own sanitized pillow and freshly-washed blanket. (Okay, just kidding on the last two, but it’s actually not a bad idea!) But what I really want is – quiet. Once we’re in the air, I have about three hours to work on whatever I want – blogs, my NACLNC^® Conference speech (overdue) or creating a new product for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. At least until the person in front of me reclines their seat back onto my lap forcing me to do Sudoku (Just joking, what is Sudoku anyway?) until we land in foggy San Francisco.

That’s the point behind this blog. If you have to work on a plane, be sure you have the right equipment. Bose noise-reducing headphones and fresh batteries are a must. Check. My fully-charged iPod loaded with all my favorite music, a trash book and plenty of magazines. Check. Laptop computer and spare battery. Check – sort of.

Tom the techie loves his super powerful laptop with its 17” screen (he could probably fly the plane with it). But I love my small netbook with its 10” screen. When it comes to laptops, size doesn’t matter (laptops I said). I took Tom’s advice and purchased a netbook for functionality, not form. It’s not as powerful as Tom’s, but to his chagrin, I can work on it just about everywhere and it will even fit in one of my larger purses. It’s got a built-in Verizon wireless card so I can connect to the office from anywhere. I’m sure he’s jealous (especially right now) but would never admit it to me.

In my Houston office, I’ve got a regular desktop computer but at home, my laptop fits into a docking station and sits there ready to go wherever I want to go. Tom recommends laptops for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants on the go and I agree. Just be sure that you buy one that fits what you do. If your legal nurse consulting business is fairly stationary, a cost-effective desktop might be right for you.

If you think you’ll want the convenience of working from different locations, you’ll want a laptop. Just buy one that fits your business needs and your personal needs. Buy smart and you’ll only have to buy once. Be sure to check out Tom’s technical recommendations in the NACLNC^® Community first.

When we were shopping for my laptop, Tom showed me lots of them. What seemed to separate them the most were the different screen sizes. We knew I’d plug it into a dock with external monitors at home, so screen size didn’t matter. What I really wanted was something portable that wasn’t too heavy to carry around. That’s why I ended up with a powerful netbook (Tom says that’s an oxymoron but he’s just jealous.). It’s not the fastest, envy-inspiring laptop in the world, but, while Tom’s having to hold his up to his chest like a large accordion and type sideways, I’ve got mine on the tray table and I’m working away. The keyboard fits my fingers, the battery lasts a long time, it doesn’t weigh much and I’ve loaded it with photos of my great niece Reese.

In the meantime, once I’m done with this blog, I’m going to retrieve a bottle of water and have a healthy snack out of my carry-on bag to refresh my energy level before I start the next project. I work better when I’ve refueled and it helps me cope with all the cry-babies on the flight – especially the adults with laptops that are too big. Hey, I’ve got the tools I need to be successful and hopefully now so do you.

Success Is Inside!