International Mobility Presents Some Different Challenges

by David Fumento / Oct 4

I carry a very light weight 12″ Thinkpad X61s in a small Waterfield shoulderbag. I also have the Northface Surge backpack if I need something larger. Neither are recognizable as “laptop bags” which is a good thing to help prevent theft.  I’ve had Thinkpads since 1999 and they are extremely durable. Extremely. I expect the Dell E4200 and E4300 are in the same class of durability.  The Thinkpad weighs 3.5 lbs and has about six hours of battery life. I use it with Verizon EVDO broadband. I also have the Verizon Blackberry Curve. Like the E4200, the X61s and X200s does not have a built-in optical drive which I rarely need anyway. If I do need it I have a very small thin USB 2.0 external optical drive. A special program by Daemon tools allows you to mount a CD/DVD on the hard disk which is useful for a laptop without an optical drive. I carry a three-to-one electrical adapter which I frequently end up using,a cable lock for the laptop, AC/DC adapter for the Thinkpad for use in the car/airplane as well as in a building, bluetooth headset for hands free when driving.

At home and at work I have Dell 24″ LCD monitors for plugging the laptop into. I also use “myfax.com” electronic fax service which allows use to send faxes and receive faxes in email. I am ordering the just released Thinkpad 12″ X200s 1440×900 LED backlit display which promises 12+ hours battery life in a 3lb package. I use a Western Digital 320 GB 2.5″ external drive for backups. The laptops offered don’t have as large of a hard drive as I like so I’m ordering a 320 GB 7200 RPM hard drive from www.newegg.com for $110. With the X200s I’ll get the docking station which drives DisplayPort (as does the Dell) and I’ll upgrade to 30″ Dell LCD monitors which use DisplayPort.

The “X61s” is powerful enough to use for software development. I run Visual Studio and SQL Server on it with no problems. I’m running it with Windows Server 2008 as I need a server operating system to run Microsoft’s Business Intelligence product, PeformancePoint Server 2007. I use Sun’s VirtualBox with Ubuntu Linux for cases where I need Linux.

Outside the US things are more difficult as I don’t have a broadband card that works in each country. I end up using WiFi which is much more of a problem than using the EVDO broadband. Vista has more problems with WiFi than XP because of additional features such as IP6 and if the WiFi provider doesn’t have an up-to-date WiFi router then this causes problems (google for Vista wireless problems for suggested fixes). When the Blackberry Bold 3G becomes readily available I plan on using that in a tethered mode in Israel where I spend much of my overseas time.

If you don’t have a relatively recent laptop I’d recommend getting one for the backlit LED display (for both brighter screens and much better battery life) and the newer Intel 5300 WiFi adapter. Both Dell and Lenovo offer different WiFi adapters. Get the best, which is the Intel 5300.  I don’t see a compelling reason to get SSD at this point unless you are running some sort of database application except if you are forced to as in the case of the Dell E4200 and the Thinkpad X301. Both of these units have lower powered CPUs and some people consider it a bit too slow for their needs.

If you travel overseas be certain that your particular laptop has an international warranty. At least for Thinkpads, some do and some don’t! The Dell E4200, E4300, Thinkpad X200 and X200s and X301, and MacBook and MacBook Air are all worth considering. I don’t think I’d consider anything else for the “digital nomad.”

• Add Comment