Rocking the Mobile Workspace… August 1, 2007
My version of the ever-present “what’s in your gadget bag?” post… These are staged photos, as I haven’t had a chance to take a “real” picture at work or at client sites recently, but I wanted to take a moment to work through what my current mobile work setup is. As I’m heading away tomorrow to San Antonio for the Manager Tools Conference, I needed to run through my gear anyway just to make sure everything was present and correct.
First up - that’s a flickr link photo, and there are notes on it there. This would be my gear laid out and ready for work. “Other stuff” is shown later. Working clockwise from the left, what you’re looking at is:
- An iPod 5G 60Gb
- Connected to Shure E2c earbuds
- In a Belkin Kickstand Case
- A Batterygeek PPS-118 Portable Power Station
- Samsung Q1 Ultra with a 4Gb MMC card inserted. It’s connected to the Portable Power Station in this photo, and my
- Jabra BT 5010 Bluetooth headset is hung on it
- Blackberry 7290, propped up with the device stand from the keyboard. This Blackberry has more than a few miles on it, and has provided sterling service. It’s still getting traded in for a Curve when T-Mobile gets them later this month though!
- Sync & charge cable for my Blackberry, doubles as a connection cable for my camera. It can connect to the Q1, or to the Power Station
- Charge cable for the headset - same deal, it can connect to the Q1, or the Power Station
- Stowaway Bluetooth Mouse
- And a Stowaway “Sierra” Bluetooth Keyboard completes the set.
I don’t have a cellular link for the Q1 in this setup, but give me a network cable, or WI-FI, and I’m good to go for 4-12 hours (or more), depending on what I’m actually working on.
That’s the “core kit” out and ready. Here’s what everything looks like when it comes out of the travel bag:
Same deal with that being a flickr link. I laid it out like this because it’s (usually!) how the gear is stored inside the bags compartments - the top two rows here, for instance, are usually in a two-by-three pocket arrangement inside the bag. Key differences between this photo and the previous is that everything is cased up. In addition, you can see:
- A Linksys WRT54GS travel router (top left)
- A Worldwide power socket adapter (and no, I’m not taking that to San Antonio! I have, however, put it aside for a probable trip to Denmark later this month)
- A Rotring 4-in-1 pen/pencil/highlighter/stylus that I usually use with the Samsung
- A 4Gb USB Key (which has since been “adopted” by a work colleague, and has been replaced in my bag by an 8Gb one)
- A Surefire A2 Aviator flashlight
- My “Stuff” bag; formerly a Quantas in-flight amenity kit bag, now used to hold my “extras” that vary trip by trip, and which may be in my flight bag, or my checked bag. It depends. Here’s a sample load out for it:
Top Row:
- Mini-tripod for my camera (which is, by the way, a Canon Powershot S500 - it’s not in the photos here for very obvious reasons!)
- The charger for that camera, with a spare battery below it
- A mini-USB hub and power adapter for that
- Road-Wired Network Cable. I have a storage bag for this that includes adapters to change it into a cross-over cable, or a modem cable. Not used often, but very useful when it is.
- Mini-iPod sync/charge cable. I have a few of these - this particular one is from BatteryGeek.
Bottom Row:
- The charge “head” for my Blackberry sync cable. Sometimes just more convenient than using the Q1 or the PowerStation
- “Smart” USB cable with software for copying data from one PC to another. Came with the Q1.
- Travel-sized 3-socket power cord, from Monster Cable. There’s NEVER enough sockets to go around!
And that would be, pretty much, my traveling office. I’ve recently started carrying a 250Gb Passport drive from Western Digital around, but didn’t have that around when I took the photo. The only “main” thing that I didn’t photograph is the mains cable for the Power Station. That doesn’t add much bulk or weight to the kit. My bag would usually have a couple of pens and some notepaper, a book and/or a magazine, sunglasses and my travel documents, and I’d be good to go.
Oh, the bag? Heh. Let’s just say I have a small “obsession” with them. I have over a dozen, and that’s after a recent purge of them. The one I use will depend on the type, length and “profile” of the trip I’m taking. My current day-to-day bag, and the one I’m going to go to San Antonio with, is a Brenthaven ProLite III, originally intended for a 17″ Mac. Has just the right number and distribution of pockets for my current needs, but it hasn’t been really field-tested by me yet, so we’ll see. Incidentally, my day-to-day load is roundabout 10lbs; fully loaded for San Antonio, with most all of the above, and a reasonably sized book for the flights, it’s still under 20. I can live with that.
