technology tools trade of the - strategic finance
TRANSCRIPT
Sprint MobileHotSpotThe Sprint MiFi 2200 is a
portable router that can provide
3G broadband connections for
up to five computers or other
Wi-Fi-enabled devices (cell
phones, iPod Touch, Nokia
Tablets, Archos, Nintendo DS,
etc.) at the same time. MiFi
wirelessly connects the devices
to the EVDO Rev A Sprint
Mobile Broadband Network.
Sprint also supports the MiFi’s
GPS capabilities along with
location and mapping applica-
tions. Sprint’s Location Based
Services will plot onto Google
maps nearby locations like
banks, hospitals, gas stations,
restaurants, etc. And it’s small—
weighing about two ounces, it’s
approximately the size of a cou-
ple of stacked credit cards
(3.50" 5 2.32" 5 0.35"). The
internal CDMA and Wi-Fi anten-
nas are Wi-Fi B and G compati-
ble, and the security includes
WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected
Access), WEP (Wired Equivalent
Privacy), and SPI (Stateful Packet
Inspection) firewalls. The internal
battery will provide up to four
hours of run time and 40 hours
of standby. The battery is Lithium-
Ion and is user replaceable. A
micro-USB connection lets you
run the MiFi with an AC adapter
when you’d rather save the bat-
tery. Works with Windows,
Macs, Linux devices—just about
anything that can utilize Wi-Fi.
www.sprint.com/mifi
WaterFieldSleeve for NetbooksWith the new, much smaller
netbooks outselling laptops, it’s
time we looked at some scaled-
down accessories for this new
computing format. With an
average 10-inch screen, net-
books thump around in the con-
ventional gear or saddlebag, so
we first looked at netbook
cases. They’re called
sleeves because you
carry these computers
around like books,
and the sleeve is any-
thing from a thin
cloth covering to a
padded case. A netbook in a
sleeve can be dropped into a
larger, more conventional case
if you prefer. The best that we
saw and tested is the WaterField
sleeve, manufactured in San
Francisco and sold at
www.sfbags.com. The guy who
designs the bags, company
founder Gary Waterfield, is a
former bike messenger, and his
instincts for what makes a good
bag come out of that experi-
ence. The WaterField SleeveCase
for netbooks is available in
more than 80 sizes, customized
for your particular netbook. The
inside is cushioned with high-
grade, dense neoprene, and the
outer shell is made of ballistic
nylon. That’s not just a descrip-
tive. The fabric is an industrial-
grade, custom-woven, water-
proof, pre-Kevlar bulletproof
nylon. A heavy fold-over Velcro
strap keeps the computer in the
bag, and a loop on the bottom
is for your thumb when you’re
sliding the computer out into
your other hand. The back of the
case has a full-width pocket for
papers or a couple of thumb
drives (tie the lanyards to the
strap loops). You can get just
the sleeve, or you can add a
shoulder strap, a flap, and/or a
pouch. The quality of the bag is
excellent as is the design.
Netbooks: TheMissing ManualRight now, there are two basic
operating systems for netbooks—
Windows XP and Linux in a
couple of different flavors—so
the learning curve isn’t going to
be strenuous for most users. But
because netbooks are designed
for browsing and communicat-
ing, it’s a good idea to pick up a
copy of O’Reilly’s Netbooks: The
Missing Manual. There is no
optical drive (CD-DVD) on these
small computers, so the pro-
grams you’ll be adding will find
their way in through an online
connection or one of the several
USB ports. Likewise, backups
might be handled differently
than you are used to on your
desktop. And keep in mind,
these machines were designed
for “ether computing,” and that
means the cloud is often the
logical place to begin and end.
TOOLSof theTRADE
TECHNOLOGY
58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Nove m b e r 2 0 0 9
The O’Reilly manual will guide
you with simple, thorough walk-
throughs and explanations. And
if you get a digital copy when
you purchase the hard copy, you
can carry the book with you on
your netbook—the digital copy
weighs next to nothing, just the
electrons in the chips and the
light on the screen. The book
opens with advice about buying
netbooks, then guides you
through the setup, connecting
devices, getting online, e-mail
and browsing, business pro-
grams, collaboration/communi-
cation programs, music and
media, security, and trou-
bleshooting. www.oreilly.com
Traklogg MileageRecorderTraklogg Mileage Recorder is
an automatic GPS mileage-
recording device that keeps
track of your travels for
expense reporting and taxes.
The pocket-size device holds
100+ hours of mileage data
and will run for more than 20
hours before recharging. It
records start and stop loca-
tions; logs date, time, and trav-
el duration; and plugs into your
PC to download the data onto
the Traklogg Dashboard Man-
ager. The Dashboard supports
multiple vehicles and clients,
creates custom reports, calcu-
lates mileage reimbursements,
and displays trips using Google
Earth. A MyTrips subscription-
based online service offers
enhanced storage and data
arrangement. Visit the company
at www.traklogg.com.
People like to project their ideas and feelings onto just
about everything. Life’s less threatening that way. Well,
that might make new places and things more comfort-
able, but when you apply that kind of furniture arranging
with new electronic purchases, you could be setting your-
self up for some serious underutilization, and you might
be wasting money besides.
Consider the following example. Your Palm PDA final-
ly gives up its tired little circuits, so you go out and look
for a replacement. When you see and pick up an iPod
Touch at the store, you decide that with this item’s almost
unlimited programs and that great screen, it could fill the
gap and more.
So, right out of the box, you work toward making it do
what your Palm did. You read the first couple of pages of
the manual, enough to get it charged and running, and
then you put the instructions aside. You learn how to
navigate without a stylus and begin to download all the
apps you were used to on your old pocket companion—
contacts, calendar, calculator, memos, solitaire, and
Sudoku. A month later, you haven’t moved much beyond
the parameters that you accepted on your previous
device. You just have more of the same—10 games
instead of three and three different notepads—but you
haven’t ventured out to reach satellites with a GPS func-
tion or turned it into a dedicated MP3 player plugged
into the iPod store. Texting, Skype, RSS feeds—they’re all
in there, but they’re on a shelf. In fact, you would have
saved a lot by going on eBay and getting a used replace-
ment for your old handheld at a quarter of the price.
There’s a simple way to unlock this kind of limiting
mind-set. Whatever you buy, even if it’s just a simple
upgrade, assume that the item in the box is the very first
of these you have ever owned. Read the manual, and set
up the device. But then go back after and look through
the rest of the manual, whether printed or online. Google
Netbooks—A First Look
By Michael Castelluccio, Editor
continued on next page
TECH FORUM
Nove m b e r 2 0 0 9 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59
for user blogs for the device—nothing like enthusiastic ama-
teurs to show you what you might be missing. And once you
have it comfortably doing what you think you wanted it to
do, stop and consider. What else is there? If you’re like most
of us, much of what your new whatever can do is left unex-
amined. Don’t project a set of prescribed limits—let it
define itself for you.
NETBOOKS—A PRACTICAL LAB
With the kind of growth netbooks have shown (up more
than 75% this year as laptops fell about 32%), it was time to
take a closer look to see why they’re doing so well. But there
were a couple of preconceived notions that were hard to
avoid because these computers look exactly like a conven-
tional laptop except for their size. Bob O’Donnell, a tech
analyst with IDC, notes that the price and portability have
“shaken up the market in terms of who the
leading players are” while at the same time
“shaking up consumers’ expectations
around what computers can be.” So he saw
something essentially different in these
computers. And then there’s the now some-
what famous comment from Linus Torvalds,
inventor of the Linux operating system. In
an interview at the Linux Conference in Tas-
mania this year, Torvalds said, “I’ve actually long
been in the camp of people who think that laptops
should be small and light and not to be used as desktop
replacements. So I think that netbooks are really just laptops
done right.”
While a netbook looks like something you’re already very
familiar with, that’s one analyst who says that they shed new
light on what computers can be and a programming wizard
who says they have established a unique standard for what a
laptop should be.
For one other layer of presumptions, netbooks seem to
have evolved out of Nicholas Negroponte’s great social
experiment, the OLPC (the One Laptop Per Child). These
computers for children in the third world were supposed to
be cheap (originally $100), durable, and networked out to
the Internet and to other kids in the classroom or village.
You have to travel a considerable distance to trace the lin-
eage of that green-and-white boxy computer swinging at a
kid’s side as he walks a dusty path to school down to the
netbook (around $350) with its glossy, elegant design
and sophisticated engineering safely stowed in a leather
saddlebag—but they are connected.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The computer used in this review is an Asus Eee 1005HA. It
weighs about two pounds, has a 10-inch screen, an Intel
Atom Processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The
finish is very nice, and the build is solid.
By putting aside expectations—what’s good and bad with
normal laptops—the netbook does emerge as something
different.
To begin with, the three most obvious differences with
the Asus netbook are the bright, very sharp screen; a key-
board that’s close enough to full size (92%) to need no
adjustment; and its very small overall size. It truly is like car-
rying a book—and not a notebook—because the footprint
is much smaller than a sheet of 8.5" 5 11" paper.
But next to size, the most important characteristic would
have to be the battery. This small computer will run six or
seven hours on a charge. It took a couple of
weeks of regular use to have the importance
of that sink in. I’m used to working on lap-
tops that are often plugged in because they
will only last a couple of hours away from
an outlet. I haven’t once used the Asus
plugged in. With its wireless Inter-
net connection, it’s cordless
and untethered—virtually
all of the time. I only plug
it in to charge when I’m done with it.
As with all things digital, a netbook is what it does. Its
primary reason for being is to connect to the Internet.
Like the OLPC, all the other things it does are secondary.
There are two obvious clues that help lead to this conclu-
sion. First, there’s the name “netbook.” Second, there’s no
optical drive (no CD-DVD). You import programs with
your browser. You can also use any of the multiple USB
ports to connect to an external optical drive, but that’s a
workaround.
The Asus that this column is being typed on came with a
trial version of Office 2007, but I cast off that land line and
now use Adobe Buzzword, a really elegant free word pro-
cessing program, and Google Docs. Both are cloud applica-
tions, and after loading up an RSS reader and connecting
out to several library systems, the obvious sunk in. This
thing is really different. In fact, this is my first cloud com-
puter. And the reason it feels so different is because it’s not a
notebook at all—it’s a cloudbook.
Next month we’ll take a closer look at how to outfit your
netbook for the new stratosphere in computing. SF
TECH FORUM
TECHNOLOGY
60 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Nove m b e r 2 0 0 9