Notes From The Road: Kensington Replacement Power Supplies For Laptops
This past weekend, during a break from tending our new pup, Stella and I had occasion to see the movie Up In The Air. I’d not seen it before, at least not from start to finish. Now that I have seen it, I think I understand why some members of my family thought that the film reminded them of me.
It’s true that I am something of a corporate road warrior. That is to say, my job involves more than the occasional bit of travel. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been to Las Vegas, New Jersey (twice), South Bend IN (twice), Jackson MS, and Berkeley CA. As I write this I am in fact en route to Charlotte NC to give a three-day training course.
As The Beach Boys once harmonized, “I get around.” Further, I’ve been in this line of work for just over fifteen years.
All of that only serves to illustrate that I have at least some experience being on the road. In that time I’ve come to appreciate some relatively simple pieces of technology. Occasionally a modest little item, perhaps acquired by accident or mere happenstance, can actually improve your quality-of-working-life on-the-road.
My primary laptop is an HP 8510w. It’s about thirty months old..and I don’t yet hate it…which is a sure sign that it was truly a nice machine when I first got it. This was my second HP laptop after a long history of using Dell models. Given any choice at all I won’t ever go back to Dell.
Last Friday my trusty HP 8510p laptop developed a serious problem. The connection between the LCD and the motherboard went bad rendering the display useless. The system is only about 16 months old so it’s not quite time to replace it, at least according to my employer.
As I make my way back from SFO for the 8th time in as many weeks I’m given to consider what good company my little netbook has become. It’s been my traveling companion for a relatively short 4 weeks and I’m still coming to graps its utility. It can’t possbly replace my laptop or desktop. After all, I’m in the TV graphics business and there’s just no replacing a high resolution display for some activities.
I suspect that there is a netbook in my near-term future. My travel to and from Toronto last week reinforced this sense. At three hours that flight is about as long as you’d want to be on a 50 seat regional jet. Such is the reality of air travel these days. Smaller aircraft are being used on longer flights so that they can still offer a few flights a day on less traveled routes. While really do like my HP NX8510p notebook it’s just too large to be useful in small spaces, like on a regional jet.