Home at last, bMighty's "Tech On The Go" correspondent unpacks, unwinds, and anticipates the joys of a reliable Internet connection -- not so fast -- to re-sync his laptop with his home system.
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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You can follow Scott's progress on
Wilkesboro, N.C. -- We arrived back at our home in mid-week. The last few hours of our trip reminded us just how beautiful our home region is. That's not to say that every region of the country we visited isn't beautiful in its own way. But the verdant mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina have their own special appeal. I imagine this is a personal bias, but it lets me be happy to be home.
Here's the map of our trip from Brightkite.com.
The re-entry process is a familiar one for me, having done these kinds of excursions before, if not for such an extended period of time. Aside from the more mundane transfer of food, clothing, and other household items, the inevitable re-syncing of the laptop I used during the trip with my desktop and Windows Home Server were at the top of my to-do list.
Maintaining two versions of Microsoft Outlook has been painful, and sometimes disastrous, since the first time I began using both a desktop and a laptop. Until recently, my normal routine was to simply copy my .PST file from one computer to the other. The obvious shortcoming to this approach is being limited to using only one computer at a time. Fortunately, I found SynchPST before leaving last month. I used it to copy my desktop Outlook contents to my laptop, which it did quickly and easily. After returning and getting my laptop connected to my home network, I initiated SynchPST again. Happily, the content from my laptop was copied to my desktop in about 20 minutes, and all my e-mail and new contacts were available on my desktop as well as on the laptop. The only complaint I have about the process is that the rules I had created on my desktop didn't come over to the laptop. That made things less convenient during my trip, but only slightly so.
The other synchronization I had to take care of was that of all the standard files and documents I had changed and accumulated during the last six weeks. Most of the files were contained in my My Documents folder, but I'm not always that organized that I put everything there. In fact, I stored my digital photos (about 2,500 new ones) in a separate folder. Fortunately, I had found Microsoft's SyncToy before leaving, and set it up to copy/synchronize selected folders on my desktop to my laptop. I simply ran the program again from my desktop, and the program updated the matching folders to the most current versions of the files.
Connectivity Still An Issue
I was mostly happy with being able to obtain an Internet connection nearly everywhere we traveled. That said, campground Wi-Fi and broadband cellular connections are no match for my own cable Internet service. That's not to say that cable service is always 100%. As it happened, my cable was out of service for the first day I was back, forcing me to use my Sprint U727 modem for the day. But once cable service came back online, I was again happy with the brisk, and stable, connection.
Don't Miss: Staying Connected From Everywhere
If a significant part of your work involves uploading video and images while traveling, I recommend having multiple connection services available as options. There is no consistency in connectivity, and there may be times when you need to deliver on a deadline.
Managing Photos On The Go
While on this trip I've taken way too many digital photos and several videos. In addition to posting them online, where my friends can see them, I've been able to store many of them on an LCD digital frame. The one I'm using is the Image Moments 8 from Digital Foci. It has 450 MB of internal memory, but also accepts other types of media so I can copy files from my laptop and simply insert the memory cards into the slots in the back of the frame. This has been great for viewing images in the camper, where there simply isn't enough wall space to mount a lot of photo prints. I have the collection set up in chronological order, so that we are always able to see how our trip has progressed. Now that we're home, I've moved the frame to my office.
See you on the road (next time)!
See more "Tech on the Go" columns by Scott Koegler
