You’re a road warrior who travels the region, nation or globe.

You’re a business owner or teleworker who works from a home office. Your life is managed by a BlackBerry in the palm of your hand, or a clunky laptop that steals an inordinate amount of space in your carry-on or life.

Today, the tech of your life is shrinking. And your universe is expanding.

Enter remote computing. Parallel to the growth of “cloud computing” or the concept of information and software being accessed or delivered through the Internet available anytime, anywhere from any device, is the prevalence of netbooks.

Over the next few blogposts, we’ll look at the growing set of tools that make remote computing a reality for home officers, teleworkers, business owners – and even heads of households who rely on out-of-home access to keep their affairs in order. Read More »

Much has been written about Cloud Computing (or working with hosted apps from anywhere in the world).

I blogged on the Cloud Worker concept here at Home Office Highway.com and throughout Chief Home Officer.com. For home-business owners or teleworkers, it frees labor from place, makes “virtual office” a reality, and done wisely, can boost productivity.

For the road warrior, clouds thoroughly remove barriers to data and knowledge work.

Ramon Ray from Small Business Technology has written and spoken on Cloud apps, too. Ray recently was invited to moderated the NY IT SMB User Meet Up Group, led by Mor Sela of ProCompare.com.

Here’s Ramon’s blog post on the topic of Cloud Computing… Read More »

This past summer, as my family camped outside Concord, Mass., as part of my home office adventure called Home Office Highway.com,  I sauntered into a great wood. I was seeking the spirit of Henry David Thoreau. I was looking for peace and solitude among the evergreens and the crickets.

And I became lost.

I’d ventured off the beaten path onto a road less traveled. And for good reason. As dusk grew dark, it gets freakin’ scary in deep woods unknown. And that’s exactly where I found myself — without a Bushnell BackTrack personal GPS nativation system, locator and compass ($73). Read More »

Are you Steve?

Laptops and air travel seemingly go together like booze and car keys. Both get you stopped by authorities, but only one gets the nod once opened (that is, once the laptop is exposed for TSA’s trained eyes, you’re [usually] free to proceed]).

Laptop carry case companies have struggled to create TSA-approved cases that will speed the security process without forcing the laptop-carrying public from pulling out the hardware.

Belkin and Skooba seemingly have succeeded. The humorous graphic above was created to support the Skooba Checkthrough checkpoint friendly laptop bag ($139). The bag looks and functions like a high-end business case, but is designed and rigorously tested to be “checkpoint-friendly,” so you can run it through airport x-ray screening without removing your computer. Read More »

Our home office road trip up the Eastern Seaboard was made possible by a few things — an RV, my laptop, my wireless phone, and my broadband access service.

But was the last element even necessary?

Many teleworkers and road warriors already know this: If you’ve got a smartphone, you have Web access. With a USB cable and a piece of software, you can tether your laptop and surf with freedom.

Read Peter Wayner’s NYTimes review. Then, read your service agreement. With a simple download, and possibly a monthly fee, you might no longer need Wi-fi, a wireless broadband card, or much more than you already have in hand to access the Internet. And frankly, it’ll be safer than surfing in a public Wi-fi location, where snoops and other malcontents are perpetually seeking new laptops to ferret their way into.

Check it out. Then log on…

As home officers, road warriors and teleworkers pursue paperlessness, there are instances when “strictly digital” just isn’t an option.

Sometimes when I’m editing a large document, the screen is good. But when I need to mark it up, Track Changes just doesn’t cut it. I’d prefer to review on paper rather than on a computer screen.

During Home Office Highway, I had to print, fill out and sign a W-9 for a client. I didn’t want to leave my RV park just to print at a Design Print Ship Depot. So I powered up our portable printer. Ditto for when I had to ship a couple of packages.

For the trip, we were traveling with an HP OfficeJet 470. It completed the office in a compelling way.

GottaBeMobile had a pretty thorough review of the unit. Another was posted at TabletPCBuzz. My own thoughts would focus on portability (it was small, neat and easily retrieved and stashed again), speed (22 pages per minute in black, and 17 ppm in color), and functionality. It was plainly a power tool. It’s simple to set up, easy to power up, and equally easy to power down and stash away.

When space, speed, power and portability are important — in a device that costs around $250, the 470 is a pretty cool power tool.