Long time no see!

I have to appologise to all of you and especially to Jaap for not participating in the Site's community. But I have some good reasons for doing so:

1) My wife and I have set to refurbished her parents home in order for us to move in, with the whole project estimated to take 4 months. We achieved this goal 17 days ago (although there are still some external painting and minor works left).

2) My trusty Pocket PC crashed again (at the time I stop blogging)! Although I was not unaccostomed with the procedure of bringing it back to life and reinstalling all the programs (it usually takes about 2 hours), I decided this time NOT to go through with it. The decision has to do partly with what says Jaap in his posting on 2/8/2006 "Working from a Pocket PC" and partly with reason No 3 that follows.

3) A few days before my Pocket PC crashed I started wondering (just as Jaap and many others do I believe), how efficient I really was with my Pocket PC. Surely I can manage my Contacts, Appointments, Tasks, Emais, listen to music, see a video, browse the Net, read an e-book or look up at reference material, but when it comes to really producing a report, the capabilities of a Pocket PC are not enough. The main problem is not the missing keyboard (it can be replaced by software, hardware or it can be already part of a high-end device) and it is not the software (TextMaker does a marvelous job). In my opinion, it is the screen: You just can not work effectively in such a small screen. One of the pros of Pocket PCs, their small size, is also one of their disadvantages. On the other hand, moving around with a desktop replacement laptop (I needed such a laptop since I did not own any other computer, so I wanted it full-packed), is not an easy task, when you have to visit 3-4 clients downtown. These laptops weight about 4 kgs and you also have to bring along their power cords and adaptors since their battery's lifetime of aroun 1,5 hours will not get you through the day, adding another 0,5 kgr. So I bought from e-Bay a used COMPAQ Tablet PC with a Transmeta Crusoe Processor, 768MB RAM, 10.2" Screen, 30GB Hard Drive, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Modem, 2 USB ports, a Video - Out Port as well as Compact Flash and PC Card slots. It only weights about 1,5 kgs and its battery although used, lasts about 3 hours and even its power adaptor is lighter. Its keyboard is detachable so I can further reduce its weight it I only want to use its pen (just like a bigger Pocket PC).

So... I did not think that I had anything to write about. My Pocket PC was dead (actually I had to revive it to get my various pins and passwords stored in it) and I used a Tablet PC for work. But then it hit me: Nowhere had Jaap ever said that this is a site devoted to Pocket PCs or Palm devices, or smartphones. It was devoted to the people / professionals that moved around a lot and used computers for their work, communication, pleasure etc. And guess what? I still was doing all these things. I was still a Modern Nomad.

Furthrmore I remembered the very first article Jaap wrote on 14/3/2006 "The Modern Nomad". In this article he shared his thoughts about how people tend to "live of their environment", which in the case of Modern Nomads using Mobile Technology resulted in "Borrowing" bandwith, electricity etc....

Well, what if we borrowed more tangible things, like hardware? Then we would not need to carry with us a laptop, we could just use the computers at the place of work, vacation etc. We could just use a client's computer to write our report, or the hotel's computer to surf the net, read our emails etc.

There are a few problems with this concept though:

1) Is the necessary hardware available (both in terms of actual existence as well as in terms of being available when and for as long as we need it)?

2) Are the necessary programs available? What complicates even more the "software" part of the problem is the fact that there are a lot of versions of the same programs around still used (one can find versions of Microsoft Word dating back to 2000 or even earlier), not to mention that different programs can be used for the same job  like producing PDF documents, surfing the net etc. There is also the problem of being able to view your personal data, like emails date schedule, contacts, passwords etc, although one could use or web-based alternative.

The hardware problem can most of the times be overcome by either checking with the working site if a computer will be available or by asking the hotel if there are computers available for the clients' use.

 The software part of the problem has its solution in a new breed of applications called "portable". Portable applications are versions of the software we may already use (like Mozilla Firefox), or of software we know is out there but we  (may) have not used up to this day (like the OpenOffice.org Suite). These applications are standalones, that is, they do not need to install anything to the computer. You just copy their folder to the computer, double-click the .exe file of the application and they run. It is back to the good old times of DOS!

 There are four main benefits deriving from the use of such apps:

  1) The main advantage over traditional software is that these portable applications can be stored in a USB key, or CF, SD etc memory card and be executed from it, thus their name "portable". You just take with you your USB key with the software you need, put it in your pocket, and when you have a computer available, plug it and you can immediately start working. All your settings are there, your favorites, emails etc.

  2) The second pro of portable applications is their anonymity. They do not leave any traces on the computer you use since all settings, temp files, history of visited sites etc are stored locally on the USB key. Therefore you do not need to worry that others that use the same computer (especially if it is a public computer in a Internet Cafe or a hotel) may find out information about your business or your personal life.

  3) The third advantage is that your computer will suffer a lot less from the garbage that the usual applications leave behind when they are uninstalled: Registry entries, .dll files or even forgotten folders and settings files. Portable applications are uninstalled with the simple deletion of the folder that contains them. They may also have a Registry entry that associates the application with a certain type of file(s) and that is all.

  4) Their last but not least advantage is their size. It would not have been wise to make mobile applications suites of 300-400MB or standalone applications of 30-50MB. After all, they are supposed to fit in a memory card, along with the files, documents, media etc you need. Granded,portable media drives are getting cheaper everyday, but a 1GB card should suffice.

  I have been using a variety of portable applications for the past two months and I can tell you that they perform as well as the conventional programs. Here is a list of the ones I use for my business and pleasure:

• Essential PIM (a Personal Information Management program with Calendar, To do list and Contacts).
• Notepad++ : a free (GNU) source code editor
• iDaily Diary, which is an electronic version of a Diary
• Foxit Reader, a PDF Reader
• Open Office.org Ver. 2, a complete office suite which includes a document writer, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application, a database, all bundled together in a nice, Microsoft Office compatible application.
• Portable Firebox for Internet browsing
• Portable Thunderbird for emailing and RSS feeds
• Portable Gaim (IM Messenger)
• WinHTTrack, which is a Website Copier
• IE Privacy Keeper, which can clean all your traces from a computer (including traces from the IE, the Firefox, the System and the Registry)
• EasyThumb (Picture Converter)
• FSViewer (Picture Viewer)
• Portable VLC Media Player
• SUPER(audio and video converter)
• KeePass Password Safe
• ClamWin Portable Antivirus
• Magenta Polylexicon (a Greek-English-French-Italian-German dictionary)
• SONY Route Planner Europe (an electronic road map of Europe)
• File Sync (a file syntonization utility)
• PStart (a program launch utility like the START button of Windows for launching the portable applications)
  

  Most of the above programs are a few MB (around 5) with many, especially the utilities, being smaller than 1 MB. The largest is the Open Office.org suite which is around 170 MB.

  There are of course some disadvantages in the use of portable apps. One is the speed of execution. Due to the fact that they run from an external drive, they are a bit slower. On the other hand they are smaller in size than most conventional programs which makes up for the slowness of the media they are stored. Furthermore you could buy a fast memory card or USB key and never notice a significant difference.

  Probably the biggest problem is the fact that you could lose or have the memory card stolen and with it all your programs (and files). Then you are faced with the double haunting problem of having no software to work with an well as loosing your documents which could pose a threat to your business and the business of your clients (client confidentiality)!

  Luckily, you can always back up the contents of your USB / memory card to your computer (both in terms of software as well a in terms of files), since there are plenty of syncronization utilities available. Furthermore you can have the USB / memory card contents or even the whole removable media password protected, so that if it gets in the wrong hands it will be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to extract any information out of it. The really good news in such a case is that you will only use a cheap USB / memory card and not your expensive Pocket PC / laptop.

  That is for now, and I promise I will try to write at least once a week.... (I have been writing this entry over the past 5 days after all!)

P.S. As you may have noticed, I changed the name of the Blog (since I most probably will not be writting a lot about Pocket PC freeware..) 

Chris Dimi
in Days of a Mobile Technology Enthusiast
Posted at 07:51:25 UTC