Well trip number two with my portable office, has come and gone and this time much more of a success, then previously. I have solved many of the problems, that I found when I traveled late last year to Canberra with my portable office. The trip to Melbourne went off with pretty much no problems at all.
The first change I knew I had to make was to get something better to use to carry both my laptop and my camera in. I got a backpack, which was a perfect fit for the job. It had a pocket which will hold up to a 15in notebook, Even though mine is only 12″ it still does the job. The bottom of the bag fits the footprint of my Camera bag perfectly. While it did cost a little $90, this was considerably less expensive then an equivalent, specialized camera bag, which were starting around twice the price. Good Choice all in all I think.
The second issue I had was connectivity with the 3G broadband, I suppose this is however not something that you always have a lot of control over. I know on this trip staying right in the center of the city would have made a considerably difference to staying in a suburb not so close to the town center. So this in particular will potentially more depend on where you need to stay then anything else. If you can get in closer to the city center you will probably have a better chance then if you are getting away from the city.
Finally I have found a new sort of issue in taking my office with me. In particular is that I do realize there are some limitations to the laptop that I have to travel with. I purchased it mainly for the longer battery life, and smaller lighter size. Unfortunately doing this at a reasonable price can impact the performance to some degree. I have not really had any problems when using the internet, or word processing, it is more when I have been doing some work with photos. However I suppose from a netbook, you shouldn’t expect to much really. I may try adding some more memory if it has space and see if this helps to improve performance, otherwise I can work around the speed, I just need to be more patient.
Overall though the trip worked out pretty well. There is really only one more problem to solve, to actually get a business going to make use of the portable office more efficiently when on the move. So onto the drawing board, and if you would like to read any more about the holiday to Melbourne, you can visit my other blog at www.joelbrown.com.au, for all the day to day happenings.