It’s hard to imagine being without my laptop. If you own a laptop, and had to be without it (not by choice) – you’ll understand. My ThinkPad T41 is 3 years old in August, and he’s been giving me some problems for some time.. Most were minor (USB related stuff), that had little effect on my daily work, but for the past 2-3 weeks it’s getting worse.. It got stuck coulpe of times, resulting in an abrupt shutdown, using a long press on the power button..
I’ve lost sound as well, on speakers and headphones..
So I had to put it away.. for our tech support..
It’s only been 3 days now, without emails (Lotus Notes 8), IM (Sametime 7.5.1), my 35GB of WPLC related data – and it’s hard.. I do have my favorites at del.icio.us, and used Gmail from time to time, but it’s just not the same.. Google Reader kept me in sync with my feeds, but being away from my data was just too hard. And although many collaboration softwares are available (from IBM and others), I realized I just didn’t use them as much as I like.
Only today I had to give a presentation about Web 2.0 at IBM, using Lotus SW, to a large customer. I realized that all my files are stored on my hard-disk, and I have no remote access to them. There is a security issue, obviously, in putting personal data on a shared spcae, but there are many examples out there of how to make resources available online, shared as well as private.
So, my (new) resolution after this short laptop-less experience is to make a better use of Lotus collaboration software, so I’ll have most of my HOT materials available online, regardless of location and device…
BTW, my laptop is fine – new motherboard, and we’re back to business..
