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Working Online

Recently my laptop's hard drives failed. They had been set up as mirrored (both having the same data in case one fails) and I was able to limp along for a week while new hard drives were on their way. Thankfully I had been moving more and more stuff onto the web. When the laptop finally croaked, I did lose all the data on the hard drives, but it wasn't much of a loss.

So others can benefit from my example, I'm putting together this page that explains how I'm "Living on the web".

Equipment

Laptop: I am running MS Windows XP on my laptop, but only for two reasons:

  1. I have a somewhat non-standard RAID controller that Linux doesn't seem to like much, and
  2. Civilization 4 .
I try not to keep anything important on the laptop, so if I should lose it, it wouldn't be much of a loss.

Phone: I'm currently using the Verizon VX6700 but wish I could have something more like the i-mate Ultimate 6150 or maybe the i-mate Ultimate 7150 - stupid CDMA network/damn Verizon.

Phone Keyboard: Recently I picked up a Stowaway Sierra Bluetooth Keyboard. It works pretty well, and I am getting used to it. It isn't needed for quick notes, but for longer text entries, such as at meetings taking notes, it is very handy.

Software

Laptop

My main browser is FireFox free!, which I use with a few addons:

  • Google Firefox Bookmarks free!
  • No Script free!
  • Download Them All! free!
  • Try Again free! - this should have been a part of every web browser ever made. There is no excuse whatsoever for a browser to give up trying to load a web page!
  • Web Developer free!

I also need a terminal program, so I use Putty free!. Most people don't need this, but as a web developer, I find it crucial.

WinSCP free! is a helpful addition to Putty.

Google Talk free! is a decent enough text and audio messenger.

Paint.NET free! is a decent basic graphics editor.

MS ActiveSync free! is needed to allow my PDA phone to properly hook up to the Internet through the laptop's connection. I suppose I could use the phone's Internet connection through Verizon Wireless, but that is slow for anything major.

PDA

GMobileSync free! allows me to synchronize my PDA's calendar with my Google calendar.

FlexWallet 2006 is a great program that I use for storing all my passwords safely on my PDA.

I don't use the Windows Mobile email since I use Google Mail for all my email accounts.

Websites

FireFox has the ability to have multiple home pages, which is pretty cool. When you start the browser, it loads in each of them in its own tab. You run FireFox, and go to the menu item "Tools/Options" to bring up the options dialog box. Select the "Main" tab and in the "Home Page" text box enter your multiple home pages separated by a "|". Mine looks like:
http://mail.google.com|http://ronhelwig.com|http://www.rememberthemilk.com/home/ron.helwig/

I store all my important data online, either on my personal website or at one of these fine free sites: