laptop

A couple of months ago I jumped on an airplane to Las Vegas for the Institute’s CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program. I normally work on flights. I carry my own water, jack my iPod^® Classic into my Bose^® sound-reducing headphones and crank up Prince. I’m so self-contained that the only thing that can ruin my flight is when the guy in front of me leans his seat back into my lap so he can sleep.

Even before we take off, I have my laptop on my lap waiting for the double bell that allows real business travelers to work and fake business travelers to sleep (or suck down as many free drinks as they can if they’re in first class). Vegas can be 3½ hours from Houston and this time I got lucky – no sleepers. I cranked up the laptop, got to work, didn’t look up until final approach into LAS and I didn’t think anything of it.

In Vegas, I was comparing flight notes with another staff member who told me her laptop conked out somewhere around West Texas, about 1½ hours into the flight. We have the same model laptop so I was a little confused why I could work for 3 hours and she couldn’t (no it’s not just stamina). I volunteered to take a look at her laptop (it makes me look good even though it’s my job). After two minutes, I figured out her issues, at least the ones related to her laptop. One of those issues was the strain on the laptop’s battery.

Based on this experience, here are some steps and tips to extend the life of your laptop batteries whether you’re flying across the country, working in the medical library or soaking up the free Wi-Fi at Starbucks^®.

Keep a Low-Power Profile

• Right click My Computer on your desktop, click Hardware and click Hardware Profiles. If you’re undocked, copy the profile you are in and rename it to Undocked-Normal.
• Click Start, Settings, Network Connections and Panel and disable your Wireless Network Connection. (When you’re in the air or out of range of the wireless Internet, the computer will keep trying to connect and runs down the battery trying).
• Highlight the current profile, click Rename and name it Undocked-No Wireless.
• Dim the laptop screen a couple of notches. You don’t need a tan while you work, so maximum brightness is not necessary.
• Click Start, Control Panel and Power.

• Next time you boot up your laptop it will give you a choice of which profile to select so if you’re out of range of wireless, pick the Undocked-No Wireless and your laptop battery will get extended life.

Stick It in Your Ear

• Don’t listen to music on your laptop – get an iPod or Zune^® and use the ear-buds or a Bose headset.

Empty It Out

• Don’t watch DVDs or listen to CDs on your laptop and make darn sure you don’t have a CD or DVD hiding in the built-in player.

Ditch It and Stick It

• Pull out the CD/DVD player and replace it with a second battery.
• Buy the battery with the highest number of cells (6-12) and look for a high watt-hour (WHr) rating. The more cells and higher WHr, the longer it will last.
• You probably won’t be listening to CDs or watching DVDs on the road but if you think you will, just toss the modular player in your computer case and only use it when plugged into a wall jack.
• Some computers have portable battery packs you can attach – consider one.

Juice Up Every Chance You Get

• Use your charger right up to the last second in the airport or Starbucks. Any time spent on the ground using your battery is less time in the air on your battery. Don’t be afraid to top off unless you have an older non Li-ion battery.
• Once you’re on the ground, run the battery(ies) completely down and charge them overnight. Do this each night. It’s always good to run through a full power cycle as often as possible.

Make New Friends at the Airport (You Won’t See Them for Long)

• I carry one of those goofy power plugs from my local hardware store that allows me to plug three cords into one wall plug. If I need to juice it at Starbucks and some sandaled, goatee-type is already plugged into the wall socket I can usually talk him (or her) into letting me share by plugging in the adapter so we can all make nice.

I’ve flown New York City to San Diego on one charge using the above methods and highly recommend them. The only problem is my batteries last so long I can’t use the dead-battery excuse so I can shut down and dig deep into the latest Lee Child thriller.

Here’s one last tip. If your airport doesn’t have free Wi-Fi (a lot do), find the closest airline club, one club-member benefit is usually free, unsecured, wireless Internet. You’ll locate it quickly by looking for the laptop owners crouched against the club’s wall desperately downloading email.

Keep on Techin’, (and I’ll see you at the wall socket!)

Tom

I haven’t gotten into the “cloud” yet. Something about keeping my documents in the vast reaches of Cyberspace doesn’t appeal to me. But for a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who needs to move documents from one computer to another, I tend to prefer “sneakerspace.” This is where USB flash drives (or memory sticks) stand out. I don’t like to email confidential documents and burning them onto a CD is time consuming. Instead I jack a USB drive into one of the spare ports on my computer and drag the document(s) onto the drive. The hardest part is remembering to get the drive back from the recipient. It’s also another way to carry or send a set of your important data, reports, presentations, graphics, etc., from one location to another without having to carry a laptop or burn multiple CDs.

The first and smallest form of USB memory is the flash drive. A couple of years ago these were expensive – today I get USB memory sticks in the mail as gifts from vendors! There are no moving parts – just a solid stick of memory (like in your digital camera). If you buy one, SanDisk^® makes a great 4GB USB flash drive called the Cruzer^® Micro that retails at $35 (nobody pays retail anymore – I’ve seen them as low as $10 on Amazon.com ). First thing I do with mine is delete all the programming that comes preloaded. If 4GB isn’t enough for you they also come in 8GB and 16GB models. Go for as big as you can afford to lose (yes, you do lose them). Other manufacturers are Kingston^® (8GB DataTraveler about $18) and Corsair^® (Flash Voyager series – 8GB – about $25before rebate or 64 GB – about $125 before rebate. Make sure whatever flash drive you buy is USB 2.0 for faster data loading and transfer.

If you really want to have some fun with your USB flash drive – buy a USB Geek Teddy Bear for $17. It’s only a 1GB flash drive but the draw is that the drive is hidden inside a 3″ x 4″ teddy bear. You pop its head off and jack the bear’s neck into your computer. The decapitated bear looks really funny and it will definitely get plenty of attention at the next continuing legal education conference you attend to meet attorney-prospects.

Portable hard drives or pocket drives are the next step up in the world of portable data. These are small (20GB or so) external hard drives. Prices start around $40 and go up. Western Digital^® has a 500GB My Passport^® series selling for just over $100. After you load all your music onto your iPod you can drag it off your computer and onto one of these, freeing space on your hard drive. You can also store all those unedited photos from your vacations and keep one drive (or partition if you speak geek) as an archive for your reports and the research you’ve done for your attorney-clients. Many of these come with software that will allow you to automate back-up for your data at a time of your choosing.

If you really want to step up in the world of storage, shell out for a Terrabyte (1,000GB!) external hard drive (available from a variety of manufacturers). Some plug into your home network allowing you to back up all the computers in your home on one drive. Others may only connect to one computer at a time. Some of the more complex drives are even RAID Level 1 with data redundancy and hot-swappable drives (if you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t need to know – yet).

Remember, it’s not “if” your computer will fail, it’s “when.” Murphy’s Law says it will go at the worst possible time. The savvy legal nurse consultant is always prepared. You’ve got an Epi-kit in your purse now, you can keep your data there too.

Keep on techin’ (and always read the reviews before buying),

Tom

A lot is being said now about the newest form of laptops – the netbook. Laptops were originally designed to be semi-lightweight, portable computers that a legal nurse consultant could easily carry from home to the medical library, to work, to wherever. Soon form was forgotten and notebooks became larger, more powerful and screens became wider. Before long, laptops were “desktop” replacements and almost as heavy to carry.

My old Compaq laptop had such a small form factor that I could easily open it on an airplane and work even if the hospital administrator slacker in front of me decided to crank his seat all the way back and sleep on the flight from Poughkeepsie to Sioux City. My new Dell hardly fits on the seat tray and Vickie has to belt my elbows to my waistline before I can type. Sure I’m envious of your Apple^® MacBook^®, but I can’t wait to see you try and open it up while seated next to me in steerage.

Netbooks and mini-notebooks are the backlash. These are tiny laptops usually weighing under three pounds with 10-inch screens, Windows^® XP and Microsoft^® Works (Linux and OpenOffice, if you’re daring), a relatively small hard drive, 80 GB or so, or a 40GB SSD (solid state drive), 1GB of RAM and a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor. They are priced at just over $400. That sounds like a pretty good deal – but is it? Sure, it is a computer but they’re not designed to be used by a hard-working, multi-tasking Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. These are designed with one purpose in mind – portability.

They’re great if all you want to do is surf the web. You can do research for your legal nurse consulting business, stay in touch with your attorney-clients via email and maybe do a little word processing (such as drafting that report at the library or taking notes while interviewing a potential plaintiff). Do not, however, expect much performance from one of these. They’re better than trying to surf the Internet on a smart phone, but don’t try to edit photos, include graphics in a report or render a report into a PDF. Netbooks generally do those tasks – but you’ll spend a long time watching the onscreen hourglass. And, if you’ve got big hands or thick fingers, the tiny keyboard will make you crazy. You may also need to consider an external CD/DVD drive if you plan on installing software other than what’s preinstalled.

But, you can tuck the netbook in a backpack or purse and travel fast and loose. We have an old Fujitsu P-series Lifebook (yeah – it’s old and slow) that’s about the same size and weight as a netbook that we carry on vacation. With my Verizon Wireless Internet card or the hotel’s wireless, it keeps me on the Web, in the know and weighs a little over three pounds (and it’s paid for).

If you’re considering a netbook purchase, here’s some basic specs:

• Windows^® XP.
• 80-120 GB hard drive (not solid state) running at 5,400 rpm or higher.
• 1-1.5 GB of RAM.
• Largest keyboard supplied by that maker (92% is great!)
• Built in Wi-Fi card (802.11b/g) and an 10/100 Fast Ethernet jack.
• 6-cell battery, if you’ll be traveling or using your netbook away from your office.
• Built-in speakers.
• VGA-out so you can plug in an external monitor at home.
• Two or more USB inputs/jacks (one for your USB hub at home).
• Microsoft^® Works with the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack.
• Norton or MacAfee Internet security software.

If you have money for just one computer this year – buy yourself a full-fledged notebook as a desktop replacement and skip the netbook. Then get yourself a dock and all the other stuff discussed in my earlier Tuesday Tech Tip Extend Yourself with a Hub, published December 23, 2008. You’ll have a better experience and get more out of it.

If you have the money and the need to buy yourself a $400 convenience – consider a netbook. It’s a convenience you won’t regret.

Keep on techin’,

Tom