TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of theTRADE

ble, and the security includes padded case. A in a your other hand. The back of the WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected sleeve can be dropped into a case has a full-width pocket for Access), WEP (Wired Equivalent larger, more conventional case papers or a couple of thumb Privacy), and SPI (Stateful Packet if you prefer. The best that we drives (tie the lanyards to the Inspection) firewalls. The internal saw and tested is the WaterField strap loops). You can get just battery will provide up to four sleeve, manufactured in San the sleeve, or you can add a hours of run time and 40 hours Francisco and sold at shoulder strap, a flap, and/or a of standby. The battery is Lithium- www.sfbags.com. The guy who pouch. The quality of the bag is Ion and is user replaceable. A designs the bags, company excellent as is the design. Sprint Mobile micro-USB connection lets you founder Gary Waterfield, is a HotSpot run the MiFi with an AC adapter former bike messenger, and his : The The Sprint MiFi 2200 is a when you’d rather save the bat- instincts for what makes a good Missing Manual portable router that can provide tery. Works with Windows, bag come out of that experi- Right now, there are two basic 3G broadband connections for Macs, devices—just about ence. The WaterField SleeveCase operating systems for netbooks— up to five or other anything that can utilize Wi-Fi. for netbooks is available in Windows XP and Linux in a Wi-Fi-enabled devices (cell www.sprint.com/mifi more than 80 sizes, customized couple of different flavors—so phones, iPod Touch, Nokia for your particular netbook. The the learning curve isn’t going to Tablets, , Nintendo DS, WaterField inside is cushioned with high- be strenuous for most users. But etc.) at the same time. MiFi Sleeve for grade, dense neoprene, and the because netbooks are designed wirelessly connects the devices Netbooks outer is made of ballistic for browsing and communicat- to the EVDO Rev A Sprint With the new, much smaller nylon. That’s not just a descrip- ing, it’s a good idea to pick up a Network. netbooks outselling , it’s tive. The fabric is an industrial- copy of O’Reilly’s Netbooks: The Sprint also supports the MiFi’s time we looked at some scaled- grade, custom-woven, water- Missing Manual. There is no GPS capabilities along with down accessories for this new proof, pre-Kevlar bulletproof optical drive (CD-DVD) on these location and mapping applica- computing format. With an nylon. A heavy fold-over Velcro small computers, so the pro- tions. Sprint’s Location Based average 10-inch screen, net- strap keeps the in the grams you’ll be adding will find Services will plot onto books thump around in the con- bag, and a loop on the bottom their way in through an online maps nearby locations like ventional gear or saddlebag, so is for your thumb when you’re connection or one of the several banks, hospitals, gas stations, we first looked at netbook sliding the computer out into USB ports. Likewise, backups restaurants, etc. And it’s small— cases. They’re called might be handled differently weighing about two ounces, it’s sleeves because you than you are used to on your approximately the size of a cou- carry these computers desktop. And keep in mind, ple of stacked credit cards around like books, these machines were designed (3.50"  2.32"  0.35"). The and the sleeve is any- for “ether computing,” and that internal CDMA and Wi-Fi anten- thing from a thin means the is often the nas are Wi-Fi B and G compati- cloth covering to a logical place to begin and end.

58 STRATEGIC FINANCE I N ovember 2009 TECH FORUM

Netbooks— A First Look By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

People like to project their ideas and feelings onto just about everything. Life’s less threatening that way. Well, The O’Reilly manual will guide an automatic GPS mileage- that might make new places and things more comfort- you with simple, thorough walk- recording device that keeps able, but when you apply that kind of furniture arranging throughs and explanations. And track of your travels for with new electronic purchases, you could be setting your- if you get a digital copy when expense reporting and taxes. self up for some serious underutilization, and you might you purchase the hard copy, you The pocket-size device holds be wasting money besides. can carry the book with you on 100+ hours of mileage data Consider the following example. Your Palm PDA final- your netbook—the digital copy and will run for more than 20 ly gives up its tired little circuits, so you go out and look weighs next to nothing, just the hours before recharging. It for a replacement. When you see and pick up an iPod electrons in the chips and the records start and stop loca- Touch at the store, you decide that with this item’s almost light on the screen. The book tions; logs date, time, and trav- unlimited programs and that great screen, it could fill the opens with advice about buying el duration; and plugs into your gap and more. netbooks, then guides you PC to download the data onto So, right out of the , you work toward making it do through the setup, connecting the Traklogg Dashboard Man- what your Palm did. You read the first couple of pages of devices, getting online, e-mail ager. The Dashboard supports the manual, enough to get it charged and running, and and browsing, business pro- multiple vehicles and clients, then you put the instructions aside. You learn how to grams, collaboration/communi- creates custom reports, calcu- navigate without a stylus and begin to download all the cation programs, music and lates mileage reimbursements, apps you were used to on your old pocket companion— media, security, and trou- and displays trips using Google contacts, calendar, , memos, solitaire, and bleshooting. www.oreilly.com Earth. A MyTrips subscription- Sudoku. A month later, you haven’t moved much beyond based online service offers the parameters that you accepted on your previous Traklogg Mileage enhanced storage and data device. You just have more of the same—10 games Recorder arrangement. Visit the company instead of three and three different notepads—but you Traklogg Mileage Recorder is at www.traklogg.com. haven’t ventured out to reach satellites with a GPS func- tion or turned it into a dedicated MP3 player plugged into the iPod store. Texting, , RSS feeds—they’re all in there, but they’re on a shelf. In fact, you would have saved a lot by going on eBay and getting a used replace- ment for your old handheld at a quarter of the price. There’s a simple way to unlock this kind of limiting mind-set. Whatever you buy, even if it’s just a simple upgrade, assume that the item in the box is the very first of these you have ever owned. Read the manual, and set up the device. But then go back after and look through the rest of the manual, whether printed or online. Google continued on next page

N ovember 2009 I STRATEGIC FINANCE 59 TECHNOLOGY TECH FORUM

for user blogs for the device—nothing like enthusiastic ama- FIRST IMPRESSIONS teurs to show you what you might be missing. And once you The computer used in this review is an Eee 1005HA. It have it comfortably doing what you think you wanted it to weighs about two pounds, has a 10-inch screen, an do, stop and consider. What else is there? If you’re like most Atom Processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The of us, much of what your new whatever can do is left unex- finish is very nice, and the build is solid. amined. Don’t project a set of prescribed limits—let it By putting aside expectations—what’s good and bad with define itself for you. normal laptops—the netbook does emerge as something different. NETBOOKS—A PRACTICAL LAB To begin with, the three most obvious differences with With the kind of growth netbooks have shown (up more the Asus netbook are the bright, very sharp screen; a key- than 75% this year as laptops fell about 32%), it was time to board that’s close enough to full size (92%) to need no take a closer look to see why they’re doing so well. But there adjustment; and its very small overall size. It truly is like car- were a couple of preconceived notions that were hard to rying a book—and not a notebook—because the footprint avoid because these computers look exactly like a conven- is much smaller than a sheet of 8.5"  11" paper. tional except for their size. Bob O’Donnell, a tech But next to size, the most important characteristic would analyst with IDC, notes that the price and portability have have to be the battery. This small computer will run six or “shaken up the market in terms of who the seven hours on a charge. It took a couple of leading players are” while at the same time weeks of regular use to have the importance “shaking up consumers’ expectations of that sink in. I’m used to working on lap- around what computers can be.” So he saw tops that are often plugged in because they something essentially different in these will only last a couple of hours away from computers. And then there’s the now some- an outlet. I haven’t once used the Asus what famous comment from Linus Torvalds, plugged in. With its wireless Inter- inventor of the Linux . In net connection, it’s cordless an interview at the Linux Conference in Tas- and untethered—virtually mania this year, Torvalds said, “I’ve actually long all of the time. I only plug been in the camp of people who think that laptops it in to charge when I’m done with it. should be small and light and not to be used as desktop As with all things digital, a netbook is what it does. Its replacements. So I think that netbooks are really just laptops primary reason for being is to connect to the . done right.” Like the OLPC, all the other things it does are secondary. While a netbook looks like something you’re already very There are two obvious clues that help lead to this conclu- familiar with, that’s one analyst who says that they shed new sion. First, there’s the name “netbook.” Second, there’s no light on what computers can be and a programming wizard optical drive (no CD-DVD). You import programs with who says they have established a unique standard for what a your browser. You can also use any of the multiple USB laptop should be. ports to connect to an external optical drive, but that’s a For one other layer of presumptions, netbooks seem to workaround. have evolved out of Nicholas Negroponte’s great social The Asus that this column is being typed on came with a experiment, the OLPC (the ). These trial version of Office 2007, but I cast off that land line and computers for children in the third world were supposed to now use Adobe Buzzword, a really elegant free word pro- be cheap (originally $100), durable, and networked out to cessing program, and Google Docs. Both are cloud applica- the Internet and to other kids in the classroom or village. tions, and after loading up an RSS reader and connecting You have to travel a considerable distance to trace the lin- out to several library systems, the obvious sunk in. This eage of that green-and-white boxy computer swinging at a thing is really different. In fact, this is my first cloud com- kid’s side as he walks a dusty path to school down to the puter. And the reason it feels so different is because it’s not a netbook (around $350) with its glossy, elegant design notebook at all—it’s a . and sophisticated engineering safely stowed in a leather Next month we’ll take a closer look at how to outfit your saddlebag—but they are connected. netbook for the new stratosphere in computing. SF

60 STRATEGIC FINANCE I N ovember 2009