These are great tips for when you do not travel…
As a freelancer and as a web-worker, one of the biggest challenges that I face nearly every day is that of working with people who I’ve never met face to face. Although a few clients contact me by telephone, most prefer to deal with me through e-mail (which is actually my preference too).
How To Successfully Work With People Long Distance | Freelance Folder
Picked this up from Laptop Magazine,
‘But a story from CNN today focuses not on why people should avoid travel, but how to do it safely. Just over a month ago, weeks before H1N1 exploded, I did a similar story that asked whether flying really increases your chances of getting sick. As it turns out, CNN’s expert, Mark Gendreau, M.D., agrees with mine: you’re not necessarily at greater risk while on an airplane.
Can Flying Really Increase Your Chances of Catching the Swine Flu?.’
I have been flying every week now for almost two months, during this period and I have had a greater awareness of people who are sick around me and…. I do believe it has nothing to do with flying as this article promotes.
In the end this is all about normal precautions that should be the same regardless of the current flap – maintain good hygiene. It also probably helps to keep your laptop and phone clean with a nice wipe on a regular basis. It is also a good idea to make sure your toilet bag is nicely stocked with your preferred painkillers, temperature reducers, compact tissues, Lemsip (I know very English) and make sure you have the correct travel/health insurance just in case.
Amazon has unveiled a new version of its Kindle e-reader, aimed at reading newspapers, magazines and documents.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Amazon announces Kindle DX
So the original Kindle was interesting if a little badly designed and ugly. The second generation kindle was ugly but without some of the more awful design flaws. Now we have the DX, which looks to be starting to become the sort of eBook reader that the roaming professional needs. However there is a lack of information right now primarily about when it will come out of the US, be implemented in Europe, allow full download in whatever European country you are in, and also to what level the PDF support is functional because by far the most popular format for technical reference eBooks is that format. The other thing that is not clear is the price…
A new report by the Ponemon Institute in conjunction with Intel claims that the average cost to the enterprise of a stolen or lost laptop is $49,246, once you factor in not just replacement but intellectual property loss, lost productivity, forensics, and other downsides.
Report: average stolen laptop cost is $50K; Intel: buy vPro – Ars Technica.
This is an interesting report, but it is interesting to think about the impact of full disk encryption and full data synchronisation back to base on a continuous basis on the cost. The headings that they used are:
Now with the disk encryption and data synchronisation, you can see a different picture:
Now this is a simplistic view, but you can see that with using low cost laptops/netbooks, good full disk encryption and well implemented file sync, you can reduce the ‘cost’ of a laptop loss from $49,226 to $1,045. Even allowing for some error, the cost benefits are good in a loss situation.
Will netbooks die off as the economy recovers?
Liliputing has a great post here which is based on an Information Week article.
My own view is that Netbooks are helped by their low cost, but that is not their point. Their success is more about their form factor and utility in a low cost package. There will not be a recovery and increase in cost as the market recovers, primarily because netbook or laptop – the price of a computer in the UK is now fixing itself between £250 ($380) and £400 ($600) – $1000 computers are in the past in the same way that $2000 computers are.
Computers are getting into their sweet spot for price and the profit is being impacted by the OS cost. Microsoft is one who must adapt – their OS is now the most expensive single component in the package. I think Microsoft needs to think about its Microsoft tax and less about the Apple tax.