(Approx. 1,401 words)

Converting to a Portable Office
By Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D., a regular columnist and member of the Sarasota PCUG, Florida
www.spcug.org
bwsail at yahoo.com

Obtained from APCUG with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

Many times over the fifteen years that I have been writing for the Monitor I found myself approaching the deadline while I was on the road. Since I usually travel with a laptop I managed to get something written and sent off to the editor. Now, however, I am in the process of changing to a completely mobile lifestyle. That means that everything I need has to fit in a very small space on a travel trailer where there is no room for a desktop and a CRT. I also needed to add storage to the laptop so that all of my research files, genealogy files, photos, videos, etc would be able to go along. That's what this article is all about – fitting everything into as small a space as possible. First, a disclaimer. Although I will be mentioning various brands, they just happen to be the ones I used. There may be better ones or equivalent items available. This is not to be considered a review or recommendation of any specific hardware or software components. I have included the brand names for those who might want to get more details on the components.

To start with my laptop has a 60 GB IDE hard drive partitioned into 35 GB and 25 GB. The 25 is the space I use for Linux (Ubuntu), while the 35 GB is my Windows XP. On my desktop I had a very fast 250 GB SATA drive and a Plextor DVD burner. The DVD burner in the laptop burns only DVD+ disks at a 1X speed. The Plextor burns DVD+ & - discs at a much faster speed than the laptop drive. I also have a 250 GB SATA drive that I use for backup of both the desktop and the laptop. All of these were really what I needed for the expansion of my laptop. Or, I could have popped for a new laptop. The cheap way out was to keep my older drives and make them available to the laptop. Since the desktop hard drive has a SATA interface it has a much faster data transfer rate than the older IDE drives. To get a new laptop with a SATA drive would be more expensive than purchasing external cases. Also, my laptop has four USB 2.0 ports which allow a maximum 460 mbps transfer rate. They can certainly handle the SATA data transfer speeds. (If you are confused by the terms IDE and SATA, check out the TechTalk article for February 2003 on the SPCUG website.)

I already had one external case that I used with the backup drive. It is a Vantec NexStar 3 aluminum case which connects to either the laptop or the desktop via a USB 2.0 port. It also has a SATA connection which can be used with the external SATA port on the desktop. Although this case does not have a cooling fan, the aluminum case seems to be very successful in radiating the heat generated by the drive. It also doesn't add any noise to the workspace. This case cost $30 plus shipping. Since it had worked so well with the backup drive I purchased another one for the drive I removed from the desktop unit. 

Removing the drive from the desktop and installing it in the NexStar case was the easy part. Since this hard drive had been a bootable drive, it had many applications on it as well as a complete Windows XP setup. First, I deleted any applications that were duplicates of ones already installed on the laptop. Then, in order to prevent problems related to having two bootable Windows partitions, I deleted the complete Windows folder on the external drive. After doing this I defragged the main partition on the external drive. Finally, I checked some of the applications still installed on the external drive. Amazingly several of them were still functional. However, most had to be reinstalled before they could be used. That is not surprising since most software has to be installed in the Windows registry which in this case was now on the laptop's hard drive, the bootable C partition. 

So now I had a hard drive with more than adequate space available for any photo or video project I wished to work on. It could also be partitioned to for Linux data storage.

The next step was to transfer my Plextor DVD burner to an external case.  In this case Vantec has a NexStar-2  drive enclosure designed for 5 1/4” CD/DVD drives with an IDE interface. This enclosure is a light weight plastic case with a cooling fan and a USB 2.0 connection. The price for this case was $28.00 plus shipping. Installing the burner in the case was really quite easy. The instructions that were included were very complete. Once I had the installation completed I connected the USB cable to the laptop and turned on the unit. Windows very quickly identified the drive as a CD/DVD burner and assigned it a drive letter. 

I did have some CDs that I needed to burn. My burner application (CDburnerXP Pro) was not on the laptop. It was one that I had on the external hard drive that needed to be reinstalled on the laptop drive. That took only a few minutes. When I started the application it found both of my burner drives. I selected the Plextor and the files to be burned. The process was completely successful and was much faster than if I had to depend on the slower built-in drive. 

So now I have a laptop with 300 GB of hard drive capacity and two CD/DVD burners. All of this can be stored in a very small space and can easily be packed in foam cushioning for travel. 

Next I needed to consider what to do about scanning, copying  and printing. I had a Canon photo printer and an Epson photo scanner. However, there just isn't enough room for both pieces of equipment. The Canon had fit in a cabinet, but there was no place to stow the scanner. So I spent some time doing some research on all-in-one units. All though I preferred laser printers, I also needed color capability. The size of color laser printers just didn't fit with the space I had available. So that seemed to restrict me to inkjet units. I finally found a Brother all-in-one that actually takes up less space than did my Canon printer. It also has network capability if I should ever need it, and it will read my camera's memory cards. The scanner is only letter sized but that should be adequate for my needs while traveling. It is also a USB 2.0 unit so the data transfer speed is fast enough. Since the scanner uses a standard TWAIN driver it works perfectly with my GIMP graphics software. That also makes it usable if I am running UBUNTU instead of Windows. (The TWAIN standard is designed to link applications and image hardware and is compatible with Linux, MAC and Windows operating systems.) The scanner also has a sheet feeder which is very useful. Especially since I can scan and convert documents for storage in a PDF format, not just as a JPG picture. This allows me to store important documents on the hard drive and shred the original. That reduces the need for storage of paper documents. Although most of my bills are electronic, there are always a few that arrive by snail mail. Not every business operates electronically, even in the twenty-first century.

So now I think I am ready for the next change in my life. Living a mobile life style without having to depend on having a fixed address. This is something that the Internet, VOIP telephones and cell phones have made possible. See you on the road!

Dr. Lewis is a former university and medical school professor of physiology. He has been working with personal computers for over thirty years developing software and assembling systems.

This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).