By Jason Romney
As I write this first Road Warrior column, I'm about to fly over to LA, New York, Utah and Washington for a lightning two week trip, once more exposing myself to the often fragile and eminently capricious world of mobile business computing.
The sumptuous features of my trusty new Toshiba T4900CT notebook (16MB of RAM, active matrix color screen, 810MB hard disk and Pentium 75Mhz chip) work well to keep fellow warriors drooling in flight lounges but make me a plum target for New York muggers. So one of my first priorities is to back up all my data before departure. (If it came to a choice between handing over my unbacked up hard disk and a 5th Avenue knifing, the latter would almost be more painless...)
Given that my 810MB hard disk was almost full on day two after purchase (gasp) a backup is no mean feat. I haven't yet been able to get my Trantor MiniSCSI Plus cable to let my notebook's LPT1 port talk to my external SCSI Archive Viper 525MB tape backup unit (even with an emergency courier delivering the new Adaptec drivers). Normally this might mean thinking about a stack of floppy disks taller than me...
But mercifully a chance encounter with Mr David Geller of Travelling Software in the States (using Vocaltec's remarkable $US49 Internet Phone program) recently led to a review copy of Laplink for Windows turning up. This elegant program is essential to all Road Warriors - it lets you do fast, simple drag and drop backups through a com or printer port (and a whole lot more, of which, more in later weeks).
So I watch happily as my precious data gushes across to squeeze into a spare 780MB plot in one of my home desktop PCs. (Of course, it would have been preferable to do it on my law firm's hefty Novell server, but breaching network security with an influx of foreign data, however virus free it may be, is a distinctly career limiting move).
But we are still in the Windows environment (deliciously enhanced with the PC Tools for Windows 2.0 desktop shell) and Laplink reports some files are in use by the system and can't be transferred. I'm also mindful of hidden files. By this time I've got the MiniSCSI plus cable talking to my external SCSI hard disks so first I get Xtree Gold to find all my hidden files and then copy them across. (Of course, I only remembered later that I could have just used the trusty DOS command xcopy c: f:/s/e which would have dumped everything across without Laplink).
There's only time for a quick sigh of relief before packing the magic bag of tricks that will be the focus of untold anxiety throughout the trip. First there is the snaking tangle of cables that will keep my trusty Netcomm SmartModem M11F and notebook powered and on-line (and provide endless fascination for airport security). A telephone cord extension cable is essential and a phone-line splitter makes life much easier. Then there's a torch (hotel phone plugs are inevitably in the darkest, most inaccessible nook of any room) and Swiss Army knife (you never know when the hotel phone will be screwed, or nailed, in its socket).
I wanly prepare to farewell my Ericsson GH337 phone and Link Adviser pager and don't even THINK of packing a swank Motorola Personal Messenger 100D wireless PCMCIA modem card (the American ARDIS system isn't compatible with ours). But then comes something you mightn't expect: ANOTHER computer. Yes, the predecessor of my T4900CT was a T3300SL. When the T4900CT battery runs out somewhere over the Atlantic, the (far more modestly featured) T3300SL will take over. It gets about 3 hours battery life instead of 1.5 - and I have an (expensive) spare battery for it. (But will I have a shoulder left by trip's end?)
Finally, there's a high-tech shopping list (to be carefully hidden, of course, from my Luddite partner's contemptuous eye). If one of those dastardly new digital PBX systems blows up my analog modem I'll be delighted to have a good excuse to finally purchase a PCMCIA modem such as a Hayes Optima V.34 and fax modem. My heart was recently won by the prospect of a CardCam-VideoIN PCMCIA card which captures video to a notebook in 24 bit color.
And having been around for a while now, I've always had a soft spot for an acoustic coupler. Something like the Konexx Model 204 may seem atavistic, but, fitting over any telephone handset, it can be a crucial tool of crisis management if the Swiss Army knife fails to gouge out the hotel phone plug. Of course, the Swiss Army knife also comes in handy for the muggers...
* Jason Romney is a solicitor and information systems consultant at Price Brent's Information Media and Communication Group. E-mail: jromney@werple.mira.net.au
ENDS