Post Travel or Travel Rules



    Point A ✈ Point B; Reserved seat, wagon 15, place 20; Time: 00:42; Speed: 70 km / h; Internet: EDGE from a mobile operator


    Greetings, dear habrachitatel! Autumn mood, night train, lack of talkative companions and a lot of free time during a business trip ... Why not write a post, I thought, and started immediately. The topic has been spinning in my head for a long time, and is dictated by the very idea of ​​writing something not in a cozy home atmosphere, at a desk, but on the go, right on the road - thinking about our productivity on trips, working outside the office, on business trips, on trips, on my way.



    In fact, I am surprised when I read about how the arrival of “mobility” in work is associated only with the mass distribution of tablets and / or the appearance of the next version of the mobile operating system. I remember very well how I started using the first PDA (back then the Palm). The most “cool and sophisticated" among students of our faculty was the Motorola C350 with (just think!) A color screen. Then came the era of Siemens, Nokia fans stood apart, and Windows Mobile smartphones, like a phoenix, went on sale exactly with new versions - from WM 2002 to WM 5.0 and WM 6.X, a lot of time passed. In my opinion, their main “scourge” and minus was insufficient autonomy (not by itself, but when using GPRS / EDGE / 3G), although thanks here, perhaps, I need to say the software part.

    Surprisingly much was similar in the formation of different mobile operating systems. This is “hereditary” terrible work with office documents on mobile devices, and the struggle with encodings of incoming e-mails, and the hassle of choosing a client for ICQ / Jabber, and, finally, the formation of program interfaces and the convenience of their use, starting with the victory of capacitive screens over resistive ones, ending with the development of the ARM architecture and a significant increase in battery life.

    The most curious thing is that the mobile Internet (namely, its accessibility for everyday use) has become an indispensable tool for learning and working even before partially solving problems with autonomy. Like many others, I was a fan of devices with a hardware keyboard, and after the appearance in 3G, my WM-communicator withstood as much as 2 hours of active surfing and / or IM correspondence, after which it was discharged to 0%. After such an experience, you indulgently forgive budget Android smartphones for requests to charge them by 18 o’clock. One summer, I tried to charge my gadget zoo with solar charging ... Alas, while surfing and recharging, I only achieved support of a charge at a certain level and sunburn. :) On a long journey, a spare or external battery will not be superfluous.

    Item B ✈ Morning Station; Time: 05:55; Speed: 1 cup of coffee / 15 minutes; Internet: 3G from a mobile operator




    But with laptops, the situation is different. I don’t know what the future awaits us after the release of Windows 8 (and even more so its ARM version with Modern UI), but the laptops of the Windows 7 era completely and fully stand with all 12 legs on the tortoise shell of autonomy - this is also a great advent of netbooks, Atom and its analogs, integrated video cards and more. Ultrabooks are now taking over the baton, but will they be able to work as long as the low-powered eeePC centenarians? Here the second question arises: is it necessary for them to work N-hours? For example, in trains, more and more often you can find not just visibility, but real, constantly working outlets. It seems to me that the technology is not unfairly pushed into the background not of “long work”, but of fast charging of the device. This is actually more important on the way - to stay in a cafe / hotel / hostel and charge your gadgets in front of the next route point. And instead of the coveted unification of chargers (which, it seems to me, you should not expect in the near future - just look at the variety of chargers for electric vehicles, which at least once, two, and cost, but everyone has their own charging) for everyone who works outside the office I can advise taking a tee with you. Alas, in our realities, in the rest rooms, the standard “one outlet - one room” is strictly observed. who works outside the office, I can advise you to take a tee with you. Alas, in our realities, in the rest rooms, the standard “one outlet - one room” is strictly observed. who works outside the office, I can advise you to take a tee with you. Alas, in our realities, in the rest rooms, the standard “one outlet - one room” is strictly observed.

    Point B ✈ Point C; PAZ-672 bus; Time: 07:40; Speed: 55 km / h; Internet: EDGE from a mobile operator


    For me personally, the biggest breakthrough in work on the go was the Gmail service and other working tools from Google. Starting from Gtalk (ready to name its most noticeable advantages: the entire message history is written / saved regardless of the device, multiple sessions - started writing on the phone, finished the thought in the browser, and also fast work) and ending with Google Docs. Browsers are getting faster, work with documents online, finally, no longer resembles the struggle of an invincible force with an insurmountable barrier. The only thing that upsets is the upcoming refusal to support the obsolete “.doc” in favor of “.docx” - the legacy of Office 1997-2003 is more than spread.

    I will unconditionally give the second place in the nomination “Mobile Assistant of the Year” to data synchronization services - Dropbox and others. What is especially nice: their mobile versions take into account the realities of modern mobile Internet and can download data from the cloud selectively. I once tried using Evernote as a collaboration tool, but the experience was unsuccessful. Perhaps this is just a private example. All other alternative services (including GoogleDrive) seemed less convenient to me. In any case, taking documents on a USB flash drive with you for a long time is practically unnecessary. And the small external data carriers themselves are at risk - they are being supplanted by both the impressive amount of internal memory in the devices and the fast USB 3.0 / Thunderbolt data transfer interfaces, not to mention external solid state drives, the price of which is rapidly falling. I replaced my DVD-ROM drive in a laptop with a second SSD.

    Point B ♬ Second floor of the cafe; Speed: 0.5 liters of beer / hour; Time: 20:32; Internet: free Wi-Fi


    Often you can meet opponents of covers and films on the screen. The experience of long trips has shown that my attachment to extra shells gives results. I still remember the whole gamut of emotions when a freshly bought smartphone with the sound of “fi” and a terrible roar landed from the third shelf of the train on the hard floor of the car. With a mournful expression on my face, I went downstairs, and, lo and behold, only a hard case was damaged, and the film was scratched. Anything can happen on the road, and I prefer to erase fingerprints on the screen from an external matte film (from the moment I get to know it with glue on every new gadget), without worrying about the safety of the oleophobic coating of the display (which is not always applied). Separately, I will share my thoughts about “private” and “mirror” films - be afraid of them like fire. First, to make out at least something, it is necessary to significantly increase the brightness of the screen, and secondly, it is difficult for me to imagine why lower the viewing angles as opposed to the matrix installed by the manufacturer with wide angles, not to mention the natural color reproduction. I will attribute the matte film to the lesser of evils - the “shake” of pixels is, of course, noticeable, but anti-glare and the ability to see something in the bright sun are worth a lot.

    Point B ✈ Point D; Waiting room; Time: 01:14; Speed: 0 km / h; Internet: none


    Once, to access the Internet, I needed to use the Nokia 6822i, an infrared port and a laptop with a built-in infrared port (without USB and other civilization benefits) running Windows 98SE (Pentium 150Mhz processor, 36Mb RAM, and no, it’s not typo). The sight of Habrahabr loading for 25 minutes (via GPRS / IR) plunged me into a deep frustration, which, however, intensified after the fall of Mozilla (did not have enough RAM?) And the phone went out (completely discharged). And although my current phone can work as an access point (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth - as most smartphones can now), I still take a “modem keychain” with me. More than once he rescued me, it would seem, in improbable situations. For instance, At the opening of the NSC Olimpiysky stadium for Euro 2012, there were three Wi-Fi access points operating in the press sector, but the Internet showed no signs of life. However, like the 3G network in the area. Is it a joke, thousands of Instagram photos every second? :) The good old EDGE and laptop saved the situation. The backup communication channel is important not only in the data center.

    Item D ✈ Waiting Room; Time: 04:59; Temperature: + 3 ° C; Battery Charge: 17%


    Every time aluminum and metal cases are praised, I suggest touching them in the winter. :) Alas and ah, not everyone remembers that heat transfer and heat dissipation are a double-edged sword, not to mention the dangers of cold for batteries. So in winter, you have to take extra care of keeping all the gadgets warm, which is not always possible. I remember how, after a long working conversation in the cold, the smartphone froze from the inside ... It's hard to convey your emotions when you look at the frosty patterns under the screen. :) But I was lucky and that particular instance served me faithfully until spring. So far, avoiding the repetition of this experience with a tablet and laptops is being done.

    Point D ✈ Point E; Near the train station; Time: 13:52; Speed: 5 km / h; Battery Charge: 2%




    What else could be remembered? About data security (for example, remote control / erase systems) and the importance of "logging off" on other people's devices. Such a seemingly obvious thing often eludes attention. Once at a conference, out of curiosity, I installed the Folding @ Home client on my presentation computer, and forgot to delete it. Two years later, he received an e-mail and found that he had made a significant contribution to the decoding of proteins. :) Of course, the example has little to do with travel data security, but it clearly demonstrates that it’s better not to leave such tails behind.

    I am finally going home, to civilization and to the stuffy box of a cozy office.

    If you had adventures, from which you learned useful experience of the “rules of work on the road”, or your experience of traveling with gadgets is radically different from mine, share them in the comments to this topic.

    Also popular now: