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Hi-Tek Peru: Your technology connection in Lima
Lose the Laptop
By F. P. Nagle

From the newest eBook by Larry Becker - http://www.losethelaptop.com/:

“The next wave in laptop computing isn't a laptop (and it's already here). Palm, Treo and Clie users already have all they need to ... Lose the Laptop: The ultimate guide for using a Palm OS Smartphone or PDA instead of a laptop for everything in business.”

Let me share with you my experience of "losing the laptop.”

I'll start at the beginning - my first series of real PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) were the HP LX 95/100/200 (www.hp.com) They were a little bulky, they had one of the smallest keyboards, but with a modem/memory card and the ability to run most programs written for a PC running on DOS. I could send and receive e-mail as well as develop databases, keep all my contact information, schedules and notes in a convenient, readily available device. It was a truly portable DOS PC. (Do you remember DOS? or only Windows?) Of course it had a small screen, limited processing power and couldn't adequately replace a desktop computer or a laptop.

Over the years all that has changed. With the newer PDAs on the market, increased memory and more processing power, I've found that I have been able to replace my laptop with a PDA. It all started about 5 years ago when my job had me traveling about 50-75% of the time. With all the time spent in airports and on airplanes, I usually took only one carry-on bag, and didn't want to be burdened by the weight of a laptop as well. So I began searching for ways to have the information I needed without the weight. I was able to find programs and light-weight accessories for a Palm PDA that has evolved to what I carry today.

My Palm (www.palm.com) of choice is the Palm Tungsten T3 (no longer manufactured by Palm). At $399 (in the US), it has a color screen, 64 megabytes of memory, built-in Infrared, Bluetooth, and an SDIO slot for additional storage, and a WiFi card or Presentation hardware. Palm has since introduced the Tungsten TX which increases memory to 128 megabytes and has built-in WiFi and is only $299.

So how do I use this PDA to "replace" my laptop?

The biggest replacement I needed was for "Office" - Outlook, Word, Excel and Power Point. A program that comes with the Palm is called Documents To Go (www.dataviz.com), and it can use all the Office documents in "native" format - meaning there is no need to convert them to a special PDA format. Any document I have on my office computer can be transferred to the Palm and it's instantly available.

But just having documents isn't enough. I can edit these documents and the changes I make are transferred back to my office computer the next time I synchronize my Palm with the computer. But how about that Power Point presentation? How do I make a presentation without a laptop? An accessory called Presenter To Go (www.margi.com) plugs into the SDIO slot and can be connected to a projector and my presentation is up on the screen in living color. It even includes a remote control to use for controlling the presentation. Total weight so far... Palm 5.5 ounces + Presenter To Go 4 ounces = Total 9.5 ounces.

The third accessory is a keyboard, and there are quite a few different styles now available for the Palm. The "folding" keyboard I have works great and weighs in at approximately 3 ounces for a new total of 12.5 ounces. Add a "Power sled" to the Palm to increase my computing time to over 12 hours (do that with a laptop!), add approximately 1.5 ounces and the GRAND TOTAL is 14 ounces less than 1 pound.

Up to now the basic functions that are needed for travel have been met, but what about e-mail? With the SDIO WiFi card and quite a few wireless access points in most major (and minor) cities, e-mail is only a "tap" away on my Palm screen. Web access? Web browsers developed especially for the Palm allow you to access most sites, and newer releases have added functionality that continues to increase almost daily.

In the past when I traveled I needed a laptop, a three-ring binder for all the different documents that various meetings required, and a book or two to read for those times when flights were delayed or to fall asleep with in a hotel room. My Palm now replaces all of that. Electronic books (www.ereader.com) fill a portion of my SD memory card (I have over 50 books, both reference as well as fiction). All the meeting documents are stored on the card as well, and I still have room for music, videos and audio books (www.audible.com).

And of course the Palm also has the original set of PIMs (Personal Information Managers), Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes. These also synchronize with Outlook on my desktop, so I have up-to-date information whenever I leave the office. The Palm, coupled with a Bluetooth enabled cell phone (Ericsson T39m) and a Bluetooth earpiece / microphone (www.jabra.com), allows me to look up a contact on the Palm, tap to select the phone number to be dialed and have the number sent to the phone wirelessly with Bluetooth and then have the audio transferred (again by Bluetooth) to the earpiece. The Palm is in my hand, the phone is in my pocket, and the earpiece is on my ear. When the call is made, I can then use the Palm to look up information or notes I may need for the call, including information on the person I'm talking to, the last time I spoke to them, personal information (spouses name, children's names) and possible documents that relate to the business (Word, Excel or even a reference back to a Power Point presentation).

The last trip I took, within the last month, this was all I carried when it came to computing power. I was able to stay in touch with e-mail, begin writing my trip report and outline the Power Point presentation I would need to make upon my return, and finish reading a book I had started before leaving. Additionally, I had stored a copy of The Lion King on my SD card (converted and compressed) and watched this on the flight back to Lima (the airline movie was so boring).

So if you often find yourself wishing you could leave a few additional pounds at home when traveling for business, you may want to consider how you can "lose the laptop.”

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