Last November, I made up my mind to stop fighting the traffic in Raleigh and move here full time. Before that, I usually came down just on weekends, as many of you do now. Much as I would have liked to just wiggle my toes in the sand all weekend, I needed to work on my computer files while I was here. Making all of my files available and coordinating updates was a challenge. Here are some tips to help you compute at the beach until you too decide to c’mon down full time.
The easiest way to manage the problem is to use a laptop or notebook computer exclusively as your primary computer at home, work, and beach. The advantage of a laptop is that you are always using the same computer, with the same data, and the same program settings at all locations. There is no need to synchronize data (although you would probably want to back it up) and you are sure of always having the latest copy of your data. Modern laptops are very powerful and can do most of the jobs that a desktop computer can. If you want a better display or keyboard, you can always buy a display and keyboard for each site - it’s cheaper to buy just an extra display and keyboard than to buy an entire computer for each location. The primary disadvantage of this approach is that you have to carry a relatively heavy laptop computer around with you all the time.
A second option is to use one of the current crop of large removable disk drives, such as a Zip, LS-120, JAZ, or ORB drive. These attach to your computer with either a parallel port or USB (recommended, if you have it) and are easy to carry.
If you use a disk, you must be sure to always have the latest version of a file. To do this, I recommend that you have the master copy of data on the removable disk, not on your home computer C: drive. For example, if your removable disk is E:, you should load and save your word processor files to E:, not C:. The latest copy is then always on the removable disk. All you have to do then is to copy the removable disk as a backup to your home, work, or beach PC as often as you like to feel secure. You should probably do this just before leaving for the day or weekend.
If you chose to have the master copy of your data on the hard drive, there are a number of good programs to automatically synchronize the data to the removable disk. My favorite is called Second Copy, which you can get as shareware from www.centered.com .
An entirely different approach is to save your files on the Internet. There are a number of (currently) free services that do that, such as www.xdrive.com and www.netfloppy.com. But these services are only effective if you have a high speed Internet connection.
In another column, I will discuss making your Internet data (e-mail, bookmarks, etc.) portable as well.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).