Skip to main content

Three Things Series.... 3 Things I couldn't do without

I am finding myself increasingly dependent on a couple of things that I now leave in my toolkit.

  1. My USB adapter for SD cards
  2. My external USB hard drive
  3. My Bluetooth headset
SD cards: when was the last time you saw a laptop with a 1.44" drive; quite a long time I wager. However as I drop in and out of client sites I am faced with a series of connectivity problems which sometimes aren't worth solving given the duration of stay. More often than not this is around printing of documents.

I started out using the normal USB or thumb drive but as I changed cameras I found that the SD card I had was no longer usable with my new camera. Also given that SD card storage size it increasing I looked for an alternative that gave me the flexibility of floppy disks without the expense.

I adopted this guy, or at least something similar. I find it incredibly useful and I can carry more, smaller, SD cards around to give me extra capacity and flexibility without having to have lots of USB drives hanging around in my bag. The vendors see this as a good market for them and they have now started to combined the technologies directly.

I'm not sure how popular they will become and if the combined device will evolve (in terms of capacity) as quickly as the simple SD card.

USB Drive: I first starting using an external, USB powered, hard drive when I first came to Asia. Mostly because the laptop that I was provided with didn't have enough space for the data I needed when moving around the region and the VPN wasn't built out or reliable enough such that I could get to the data on the company Intranet. Laptop drives are bigger but I also use several machines now, I have a laptop at work, one at home, a Linux server etc so this device is even better for me now. As well as work data I am also to have music and photos stored on a highly portable media.

I recently invested in a second, 70Gb, disk that I use for backups of the first one and less volatile data; for example ISO images for SuSe etc that I can also burn a new CD from if required.

Again the capacity is for ever increasing on this kind of device.

Bluetooth Headset: Bluetooth as a real connection protocol needs some more work, but the basic headset function has become central to the way I communicate. I use a Nokia HDW-3 to connect to my current handset. After some googling and downloads I finally bypassed the poor driver delivered by Microsoft in XP and got a working headset and audio gateway working on my laptop.

This now means I can use both Skype and Gizmo with my headset and not have to be wired to my laptop. Works fine, the only thing I would change is the headset itself. As I mentioned in my other posting about Bluetooth the HDW-3 is completely spoiled by a cheap plastic clip that frequently breaks. I would swap it for this HS-11W also by Nokia.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crisis Connections

What the flood situation in Thailand has shown once again is the power of social networks to fill the void of communication. In recent times the role of Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry messenger has been shown in good and bad light.  The same methods that released the Arab Spring have also been used to coordinate the London Riots . Love them or loathe social networks are here to stay and what the floods show is how they keep people connected.  Some will say there should be no communication void if central government is on top of its game, but with a situation that can change so rapidly, and over such a large area the traditional press certainly struggle to keep the public up to date. Twitter and Facebook have been saviours for those of us outside Thailand at this time.  With roving reporters and connected people like Patee Sarasin and Jetrin out doing and tweeting many more people are kept up to date. Equally useful is the ability to time shift news updates...
Post a Comment
Read more

AaI and Net Neutrality

On a previous post on Access as Infrastructure there was a discussion on the government led initiatives for ultra fast broadband. The proposition is that the build out of new access networks is such an expensive activity that the governments of Australia and New Zealand will make the investment, using a combination of public and private money. So with ubiquitous access a near reality and with that access provided in the same way as electricity, water, gas, and roads getting to your house what does this mean for the net neutrality debate? If the telco no longer owns the asset and are merely a party in the trade then surely this solves the net neutrality problem? The incumbent may get preferential treatment because of scale and buying power but this wouldn't be extended to priority routing. Moving the competition from the physical platform to the offering, as long as the telcos, CSPs, and RSPs are not government owned, then we can have comfort that the pipe is there and ev...
Post a Comment
Read more

Muni, Muni, Muni

2006 is going to see an explosion in the activity of Municipal, Muni, Networks. This article from the BBC states that IP access is becoming a basic amenity, in the same way as water and electricity. Philly is the next to be online; with a 135 square mile network being built out by Earthlink and turned on next year. Not far behind is San Francisco with, you've guessed it, Google as one of the prime bidders. They believe they can take their successful advertising revenue stream to provide free IP access to the proletariat. On a brief aside the partnership of Google and NASA, can we expect to see Google in Space? With the benefits of WiFi access to schools, hospitals and police forces around the US it won't take long for a few well publicized examples of how access helped them for the ball to start rolling. I would agree with Paul that the secret to success is a partnership with the existing carriers. Otherwise the likes of SprintNextel could easily freeze the new comers out. Th...
1 comment
Read more