Lingering just outside Yellowstone National Park, bMighty's "Tech On The Go" correspondent concludes that staying connected requires some flexibility, advance planning, and multiple subscriptions. Put another way, it means spending $$ for services you may not use.
Our "Tech On the Go" correspondent Scott Koegler will be filing his column from the road this summer as he crosses the country with his family over the next six weeks. Though there's bound to be some "vacationing" along the way, Scott will continue to operate his small business from the road. Throughout this adventure, he'll share tips, tricks, and insights about how to keep a business running smoothly when you're on the move while maintaining a virtual connection to his office network, server, desktop computer, and video surveillance system.
Scott and his wife, Donna Marie, are traveling in a Ford E-350 van, pulling a travel trailer, accompanied by their dogs Cody and Mac. They left their home in Wilkesboro, N.C., on June 16 bound for the Rocky Mountains. After crossing the Continental Divide, they'll stop off in Las Vegas, peek into the Grand Canyon, and visit family in New Mexico before heading for home along Route 66 (and more modern byways).
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West Yellowstone, Mont. -- After driving for only about three hours through Yellowstone National Park, we arrived in the town of West Yellowstone. It's a nice town of about 8,000, but I think that number counts only permanent residents. On any given day, it looks to me like there are nearly that many people wandering the streets. But the town of West Yellowstone is located at the west entrance to Yellowstone park, making it the natural location for buying anything you might want, from gas to groceries, ice cream to souvenirs.
The RV park we are staying in offers Wi-Fi at the sites. The service is from Nomad ISP, a company that specializes in setting up Wi-Fi in campgrounds. I've now used the company's service in two different locations, and it has been reliable both times. Pricing schemes seem to differ from park to park, ranging from free to $4 per 24-hour period. When I pulled into this location, I was able to log in with my existing account, enter the coupon code provided when I checked in, and connect in about five minutes.
So far, the combination of RV park-based Wi-Fi services, Sprint U727 card, and AT&T BlackJack II as a modem have let me connect from nearly every location, although at varying connection speeds. My conclusion is that staying connected requires some flexibility, advance planning, and multiple subscriptions (read that as spending $$ for services you may not use).
When I'm in my home office, I use my desktop computer as my primary, my laptop as an additional resource, and Microsoft Home Server as my local backup and storage. I have my wife's laptop and, in fact, all my computers connected to the server, and I use the automatic backup function. I also use the personal and shared folders to manually copy files that I want to have the additional security of knowing they are "somewhere else" just in case.
I have the Home Server set up for remote access, which means I can log in to the server and browse the various files and folders that I've created. I was able to retrieve a file that I had neglected to put on my laptop before I left, saving me who knows how much time and consternation in recreating the file (if I even could have recreated it). While I was connected, I thought I might upload my photos to the server so that they were in a remote and safe location. I already have them on my Seagate FreeAgent Go drive, and several of them stored on Flickr, but having them also loaded on my Home Server would give me just one more layer of security.
When I attempted to select the files to upload, I found that I could only select one single file at a time. With nearly 1,000 new images on my laptop, this didn't seem to be an option. I'll continue to look for a better way to do this, assuming I have the bandwidth available. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
In the meantime, I'm off to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
See you on the road!
See more "Tech on the Go" columns by Scott Koegler
