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Text File | 1993-03-01 | 17.7 KB | 306 lines

---------------------------------------------------------------- TRAVELLING WITH A LAPTOP COMPUTER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Laptops are made to travel. Their small size and potent features make computing on the road a snap. Consider using this assortment of tips which seasoned laptop owners have come to rely on.... Airports are a frequent transit point for laptop owners. Be sure to be prepared for a SPEEDY passage through airport security by being aware that in most cases you MUST boot up the laptop so that a DOS prompt, menu or other sign of visible activity is displayed on the screen. Security officials do this for a reason: if a laptop computer has been tampered with or hollowed out to serve as an empty shell for explosives or weapons, the machine will not boot up or operate. By forcing the laptop owner to activate the machine, airport security is effectively screening for tampered machines. Once you know this, several important tips are quite useful. Always carry a BOTH a fully charged battery and AC adapter with the laptop. No power means no possibility of booting the machine and your laptop might be forced to remain behind! To speed the process on laptops equipped with hard drives try an experiment. Prepare a bootable floppy disk with DOS system files and a short AUTOEXEC.BAT program which boots the machine rapidly since DOS usually tries to boot from a floppy first and then the hard drive second. Now time how long it takes to boot from the floppy as well as the hard drive. Whichever is faster is the one you want to use to speed your trip through airport security. But ALWAYS take the bootable floppy as well. Why? If your laptop hard drive becomes damaged in transit - a possibility in today's airport environments - then you have a floppy backup which will also get you through airport security. Cursor size and blink rate on many laptops are atrocious. Third party software utilities are available which can alter both size and shape of the cursor - we will discuss these in more detail in the software section of the Laptop tutorial. However the point to be made is that you might find one ideal cursor size and blink rate for airplane use and a DIFFERENT cursor size and blink rate better at the office or in the airport. Try various combinations in various lighting. Several different cursor configurations are quite handy when travelling under varying lighting conditions. By the way in a pinch, The WordPerfect word processing package has just such a utility you might want to dig out if you own WordPerfect but have never used software cursor control utility! Did your portable printer malfunction and crash while you are on the road? Or maybe you just don't want to carry your printer at all. Here's an obvious idea: use your laptop and modem/faxboard to fax your file to the hotel front desk fax machine and pick it up there! If your modem lacks fax transmit capability, send the file via modem to CompuServe and let them re-send it to your hotel fax machine using their fax transmission capability. Worried that the fax image might fade or curl with heat or handling? Then xerox copy it onto standard paper which is a more permanent material than fax paper. Speaking of modems, the smallest and most "laptop useful" modems are available from U.S. Robotics (call 708/982-5010.) Their World Port modem is truly tiny, fully-featured and ruggedly designed for travellers. Hayes has also produced the Pocket Modem (call 404/449-8791.) Some of the most clever portable modems do not even need battery power - they draw current from the computer or telephone line. Hotels and airlines always have carpeting. And carpeting is productive of electrical static. Shuffle across the floor in most travel facilities on a dry or cool day and you get a spark when you touch the doorknob. This same static electricity buildup can ruin the EPROM chip in your laptop keyboard when you sit down to use the laptop. Be sure to first touch a bathroom faucet with a coin. To eliminate static in your hotel room, just take off your shoes and socks! Carry extra charged batteries on long flights or international flights. Seems like a simple tip, but that battery pack you bought two years ago may finally decide it has a one hour life somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Rechargeable batteries cannot be recharged forever - after two to five years they begin to die. Be sure you know how to turn off the speaker beep facility in your laptop. Crowded airplanes indicate courtesy. Third party software utilities exist which will provide this capability if you own an older laptop without this software or hardware feature. More about this in our software tutorial. Conserve power on long flights. Turn down the screen brightness to save power. Use the auto-resume feature if your laptop contains the capability. Switch to slow mode or lower the processing speed of your CPU chip. Your instruction book may mention some or all of these features. Some laptops have a variation of the auto resume feature that even allows you to change batteries right in the middle of a program. Check your manual. Might be a lifesaver on a plane trip. Save still more power when travelling by investigating software ram disks or virtual disks which, unlike a spinning hard drive or floppy, use far less power on long airline flights. DOS itself comes with a reasonable although rudimentary ram drive called VDISK which all laptop owners should check out. You can also obtain third party shareware, commercial and public domain ram disk software. Of course be sure to save your work to a floppy or hard disk before you turn the machine off since a ram disk operates purely in memory and MUST have power to maintain your data. If you travel out of the country, be sure to register your foreign made laptop with U.S. Customs when you depart - so that upon return you are not forced to pay duty on a machine you bought in the U.S. but which customs officials will suspect was purchased overseas. This can be a sticky subject. Contact a local customs office for instructions on registering your machine prior to departure. Travellers should also consider etching your name, address, telephone and social security number onto the machine in several places. Although this may decrease the resale value of the laptop, it also increases chances of recovery in case of theft. Don't make the mistake of etching ONLY your social security number onto your laptop. Federal privacy laws prevent release of your social security records even to some law enforcement agencies and in that respect having only your social security number on valuable items is probably next to worthless as a security item. Hotels are getting better about providing modular plug in telephone jacks for laptop users who need to hook up a modem. But it seems the telephone jack on the wall is always ten feet from the nearest table where you laptop sits. Solution? Always bring a modem extension cord with in-line connector. Makes laptop modem work a joy! Another tip: use the hotel's toll free 800 number to call ahead and doublecheck that your room is wired with modular plug-in telephone jacks. Takes a moment and costs you nothing! Speaking of plugs, investigate the new breed of miniature surge supressing AC adapters if you travel to foreign countries whose voltage can be less reliable than that in the U.S. You can obtain special anchor plates or straps which attach to the bottom or side of a laptop with permanent glue. A flexible steel cable and lock lets you secure your laptop to a hotel radiator or piece of furniture and defeats all but the most determined thief. For those who absolutely need telephone links when travelling, consider purchasing an acoustic modem coupler which works with all telephones when you cannot plug your modem into the wall. Acoustic couplers work by attaching directly to the mouthpiece and earpiece of any standard phone and transfer data directly by sound transmission. By the way, in overseas areas you will soon find that you need a maddening array of special adapters to hook your modem to the telephone line directly. An acoustic modem coupler is the only truly "universal" adapter which will connect to all telephones throughout the world. Another modem tip when using hotel telephone lines: arrange with the front desk or operator to ALWAYS put your call DIRECTLY through without intervention. Many hotel system route your call through a switchboard which prevents your modem from getting a dial tone! Diehard laptop users who communicate with the head office via modem should also investigate remote computing software which we will discuss later. Remote computing software allows you in your hotel in New York to call San Francisco by modem and then connect directly with your desktop computer or office LAN network. Once connected, you can run your word processor, obtain files, check figures on the office spreadsheet and more. In essence your laptop functions as a remote keyboard for a computer which is thousands of miles away. Shareware, public domain and commercial software packages of this type are available. But if you do this, here is one important tip many travellers learn the hard way: ALWAYS leave a note for the maintenance person or janitor which tells them not to turn off what appears to be your idle office desktop computer. Oh, and while you are gone, turn off the desktop monitor but leave on the pc if you plan to compute remotely. This saves power and prevents screen burnout! Need to test if two files are slightly different as you check newer document files against older ones? Or maybe just backup all NEWER revisions of your files to a floppy or transmit them by modem to the head office? Use the DOS XCOPY command to track down differences between two files such as word processing documents. DOS also previously had an older File Compare command called FC which accomplishes the same thing. Sidekick version 2 has a reconcile feature and Lap-Link can transfer files between to computers and check dates and times to make sure you are obtaining the newest version of a file or to ensure that both computers indeed have the latest file. By the way, here is an example of how to use the DOS XCOPY command to copy all files from ALL subdirectories on a laptop hard drive named C: onto a backup floppy in the A: drive which have been updated on or later than March 15, 1992. Very handy when you are on the road and want to copy or prepare for modem transmission all of your updated files for the head office. At the DOS prompt type: XCOPY C:\*.* A:/S/D:03/15/92 Consider travel insurance for replacement of your laptop in case of theft. Contact Safeware at 800/848-3469. Business travellers often have to present VERY important presentations with their laptops. Essential job proposals, contracts, crucial price schedules. If it is important to your business, always make a backup copy on floppy disk. Seems simple, but many business users discover that their hard drive equipped laptop has crashed due to airport handling in transit. A floppy can save the day and in a pinch you can rent a computer or borrow one from your client. If data matters, put it on a floppy. Make sure you ALWAYS carry a null modem cable and file transfer software with your laptop when travelling. You can probably patch into another desktop computer to transfer files in emergency, but without the null modem cable and software you are stuck. Practice transferring files between several computers before you travel so you have the process comfortably memorized. For the truly worried traveller, also carry a pair of gender changer plugs which allow hookup of male to male and female to female cable connections. Also a 25 to 9 pin plug adapter. Laptop computer die in transit? Carry a set of jewelers screwdrivers and floppy disk cleaning kit. If a few simple things such as this won't fix it, then grab the yellow pages and look under computer rentals. By the way, many hotels maintain rental laptops for business travellers. But the secret is that the rate is far cheaper by renting from a local vendor than the hotel. Make a few phone calls and get a laptop delivered to your hotel suite in case of emergency. The smartest travellers call ahead to their destination and reserve a backup laptop in case of problems at a local vendor. If the laptop is not checked out a small retainer fee is kept by the vendor. This can be done by a charge card and a long distance phone call. Same goes for renting LCD projection panels for business meetings. Consider obtaining a CompuServe account for modem use if you travel frequently. You can obtain online support for laptop computer problems directly from the manufacturer, download special software utility files, transmit important files to the home office, send faxes when all you have is a modem which lacks fax transmit capabilities (CompuServe converts your modem transmission and sends it on via their fax equipment.) Lots of good ideas and special laptop discussion forums for business travelers. You can even book hotel and airline reservations directly by modem using CompuServe, too. Laptops, travel and CompuServe go together handsomely. Did your ribbon die in your portable printer? Just not black enough? Stick some fax paper in the printer. It is heat sensitive and will frequently pick up an image without a printer ribbon. Amazing but true. This works with dot matrix printers. Do not try it with laser printers. Check ahead for special regulations. Example: in Germany modems are regulated under certain security laws - presumably spies could use them to transmit data. You must have a "modem permit" in that country or your equipment can be confiscated. In other countries and some developing nations such as Africa and India confiscation of computer equipment is common - even if all of your registration and travel documents are in order! In those cases you might be better off leaving your computer at home and bringing a tape recorder or notepad. Just because you own a computer does not mean you can use it in an unrestricted fashion while you travel! Tempted to use one of those inexpensive overseas power convertors to adapt your AC plug in convertor to European current? DON'T DO IT without first checking with the manufacturer. Those inexpensive current convertors work fine when changing high voltage overseas current to lower voltage US current for things like shavers because they reduce the voltage. The problem is that most of the world uses 50 cycle AC current versus the normal 60 cycle AC current in the U.S. Computers CANNOT run from these inexpensive convertors and damage may occur. Find out what device the manufacturer supplies or recommends for travel outside of your country of residence. Tutorial finished. Be sure to order your THREE BONUS DISKS which expand this software package with vital tools, updates and additional tutorial material for laptop users! Send $29.95 to Seattle Scientific Photography, Department LAP, PO Box 1506, Mercer Island, WA 98040. Bonus disks shipped promptly! Some portions of this software package use sections from the larger PC-Learn tutorial system which you will also receive with your order. Modifications, custom program versions, site and LAN licenses of this package for business or corporate use are possible, contact the author. This software is shareware - an honor system which means TRY BEFORE YOU BUY. Press escape key to return to menu.