Mobile
computing

• Portable apps & public computers with a USB flash drive
• Netbooks & notebooks
• Cell phone links including smartphones
• Other mobile technology including Linux mini-distros
• About USB, FireWire, and eSATA
• My HP netbook with Linux

Mobile computing used to be exclusively a matter of dragging a laptop computer around,* plus various adapters, chargers, and other widgets. "Road warriors" have more choices now. Sometimes the computer is mobile, be it a notebook, netbook, tablet PC, handheld, or smartphone. Sometimes it's just the data files, and perhaps some software, that are portable, on various storage media. Or maybe only the user moves around, and the data files are parked on the Internet or LAN.

USB flash drives are probably a benchmark technology for mobile computing these days. Before you think about other methods, check if you can do it cheaper and easier with a USB flash drive, perhaps combined with use of PCs at public libraries or Fedex Kinko's stores, and portable applications. Prices for USB thumb drives have been dropping; I saw 512MB for about US$20 in October 2006, 2GB at about the same price in December 2007, and 4GB at that price in January 2009.

It seems to me there are five basic technologies for computer/Internet users now:

1. Portable apps, on a USB flash drive or external hard disk enclosure (faster and bigger capacity) used on public computers with broadband; the mobile-computing ultimate in traveling light.
2. Smartphones, the convergence of PDAs and cell phones.
3. Small, light, cheap netbooks, with WiFi and/or cellular wireless, but no internal removable magnetic or optical drives, and often with a low-power, solid-state, flash-memory hard-disk replacement.
4. Larger notebooks, usually with an internal optical drive, perhaps as one's only computer, maybe with broadband and a WiFi hotspot at home. Sometimes referred to as a desktop replacement notebook.
5. Conventional non-mobile desktop computer, with broadband and a big display, or maybe multiple monitors, probably with a tower-style case, and potentially with any sort of drives and other peripherals you could possibly want.

I'd say if you really want to be connected to your friends and colleagues at all times, you're the sort who really should be walking around with a smartphone in your pocket. By the way, I suspect lots of people, especially guys, get excited about smartphone technology and get one without thinking this question through. Otherwise, if you'd rather be networked sometimes and offline other times, you might be happier with some combination of a netbook or notebook, portable apps, and a desktop PC, probably along with a teeny non-smart cell phone. I suppose the other relevant issue is how satisfactory you find smartphone interfaces for the kinds of mobile computing you need to do, compared to devices with larger displays; most people probably do think about that.

Some of the iPad buzz I read makes me wonder if early adopters are putting them in little draped shrines at home, maybe with flowers, candles, and incense.

Of course, now in 2010 we have the illustrious iPad, and Wired magazine telling us tablet computers are going to take over everything and change the world. Is anybody else reminded of all that genuflecting in 2007 when the first iPhone came out? If you can stand toting a bag with an iPad in it, you can carry the same bag with a netbook in it.

Here's my guess at what the above list is going to shake out to, in a few years, after the tablet computer fever breaks:

1. In the Windows world, portable apps on tiny pocket drives of some kind, probably based on something better than flash memory.
2. Dumb phones ... very small and tough, make phone calls and take pictures, maybe play music.
3. Pocket computer. Touch screen, bigger than an iPhone, smaller than an iPad, slides into a jacket pocket. Also built tough.
4. Netbooks, light and slim but sturdy, full key-pitch or close to it, not necessarily cloud-dependent. Nice crisp 10-inch display and cheap energy-efficient cool-running ARM processors. I still want a real keyboard and touchpad, how about you?
5. Big notebooks designed for people who want to have just one computer.
6. Non-mobile, muscular, no-excuses, go sit at a desk, desktop-style computers.

top

* I also remember the old AC-only suitcase-size MS-DOS portable computers, with 5¼-inch diskette drives and teeny monochrome CRTs built in, sometimes called "luggables," such as the Compaq Portable. They were relatively expensive, heavy and awkward, never very popular, and weren't around all that long.