This week has been great for us participants, we have understanding employers (or we work for ourselves) who allow us to work remotely, and we also have been given devices from i-mate with Telstra Next-G access which makes it easy for us to get connected up to the Internet and get work done while we are mobile.
But what about you? If you are in a cubicle right now what is it that you need to become one of the types of remote workers that we mentioned before? These are the tools that make my world go around:
- Laptop; I absolutely require my laptop. I’m running Windows Vista, Office 2007 and my suite of .NET development tools. I personally have a Tablet PC which has special support on the Windows platform which is handy for taking notes during meetings with clients.
- Mobile Device; without this I can’t contact anyone. The device I am using up here in Byron Bay is the Ultimate 9502 which gives me high speed Internet access, mobile e-mail and calendaring as well as other handy things like GPS.
Once you have the tools (you probably won’t need the development tools like I do - unless you are a developer) you need to be setup with access to your corporate environment. Typically this would involve system administrators at work setting up a VPN (a way to get into your corporate network via the Internet) - this isn’t too hard and a lot of the time the facility is already available for IT staff that might need to support the various systems after hours.
Can anyone else think of anything else that is critical/useful for remote working? What does your remote working setup look like?
8 responses so far ↓
1 David M. Williams // Apr 3, 2008 at 9:31 pm
The laptop is a must. Although, to my mind, there’s different types of laptops depending on your role and activities.
A lot of executive types are fans of the slim and light models like the Toshiba Portege or Sony Vaio series, with 13″ screens. These are light and easy to carry on and off planes.
The downside of these laptops is they’re not especially beefy, which makes sense; they have less-powered components to reduce heat and minimise size. I’m more of a 15″ laptop type and being a hefty sized bloke I don’t mind lugging it about. My current laptop of choice is an ASUS Lamborghini, 2nd series. I did keenly eye off the 17″ Dell XPS 1710 but eventually I decided 17″ and 4kg was too much for carry-on luggage.
I’ve tried out ultraportable models like the original Fujitsu Lifebook P series which was so incredibly light and tiny. It was impressive. I feared the tiny keyboard may be unworkable but was pleasantly surprised to discover it was quite usable. However, in the end the low screen resolution was just insufficient for my needs. (Not to mention the fact it had a terrible Transmeta processor which, while low powered, executed Intel code at a horrible pace.)
I recently tried the ASUS Eee and found it brilliantly portable and the solid state hard drive made it fast to start and get working with. Yet, again, the 7″ screen on current models just has too low a resolution to be the main machine, in my opinion.
Similarly, my mobile phone and BlackBerry are essential. A lot of people only want one device but I use two. The BlackBerry is GSM only - there was a CDMA model, but as yet no NextG one - and so the coverage isn’t ideal in remote locations. Plus, I prefer the QWERTY keypad of the 8800 model because I bash out a LOT of e-mails. I think the Pearl model suits those more who want a phone with the convenience of receiving e-mail and only periodically actually composing one. Yet, the downside of QWERTY keypads is they’re not great for phone handsets, in my opinion. I tried out the Samsung widescreen model which was touted as a revolutionary device for media playing but its keypad was abysmal and I believe poorly designed. In the upright mode the numeric keys were hard to find. In the sideways mode the option buttons were along the bottom which is not where you would ordinarily expect to find them. A good keypad is essential to being a heavy e-mail user.
Another reason I carry two devices is because I vary my phone regularly. I’m always keen to know what’s available so I can be up to date and give the best advice to my staff. This year I’ve used a couple of Samsungs - the widescreen, the 811, some others - a few Nokias - the E51, the N95 - a couple of Windows Mobile devices - the Samsung Blackjack, the iMate JasJam. Whereas I have my Exchange 2007 server set up so I can get mail on Windows Mobile devices obviously some of these phones are conventional mobile phones and hence they don’t always provide e-mail.
Hopefully my next phone will be the iMate Ultimate 9502 and I’ll settle down having found nirvana in one handheld
- perhaps I’ll get rid of the BlackBerry.
Another essential gadget is a NextG USB modem, although again perhaps this is superfluous as obviously a NextG phone can be used as a modem - but be sure you have added a data plan or you’ll be paying casual usage rates.
With these items I can do anything anywhere anytime. And if I have to do it somewhere specific a GPS always helps too.
2 Peter // Apr 4, 2008 at 9:10 am
Agree that to enable me to work remotely I require a laptop and high speed internet connection. Currently I get this from home via my broadband cable and connect into the company’s VPN. I also have a mobile and calls are automatically redirected from the office to it. But the other item I find necessary is a printer. Sometimes it is essential (for me) to print out a document and critique it ‘offline’. I know many will say what about the ‘paperless’ office but I’m not there quite yet.
My last requirement when working remotely is the ability to see all information which I can view when at work. eg the shared drive. Unfortunately my company cannot enable me to see the shared drive from a remote location.
How do others manage?
3 David M. Williams // Apr 4, 2008 at 10:41 am
Hi Peter,
If you can connect into the company’s VPN then you ought to be able to see the shared drives.
The problem may simply be that the drives are mapped via a login script and when you’re connecting in to the VPN this login script is not executing. It might be worth asking your company if they can advise the paths to the shared drives - of the form \\server\share - and you can then either access them directly or make a quick .bat file on your desktop to set up the mappings at will.
4 MitchDenny // Apr 4, 2008 at 11:09 am
Hi Peter,
When we set up Readify infrastructure we designed it so EVERYONE has to VPN in over the Internet so almost by design everything is accessible - including shared drives - so it is definately possible.
5 MitchDenny // Apr 4, 2008 at 11:12 am
Hi David,
I’ve actually got a Fujitsu Lifebook T4220 that I got from Hugo Ortega over at http://www.tegatech.com.au. It is actually a device with 4GB RAM and a Core 2 processor. The screen resolution is 1400×1050 which is actually pretty good for software development. I also got 1GB Turbo Memory put into it which increases the responsiveness in Windows Vista.
6 David M. Williams // Apr 4, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Nice! Very envious!
7 Nelson Lau // Apr 4, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Something that I’ve found to be very useful when working remotely is the vast numbers of web 2.0 applications that enable you to work on and store your information securely on their servers.
I use applications such as Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com/), which is especially useful for project management and team collaboration. Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/) after having acquired Writely, now incorporates a Word-style document editor, and allows multiple people to work on the same document in real time. Del.ico.us.com, a social bookmarking web application, is also handy for bookmarking articles on the fly, especially if you’re working on a machine other than your own. You can also access the bookmarks of your colleagues remotely.
The beauty of all of these applications is that your data is stored on third party servers, so it lightens the load on your own machine as well as allowing you to carry much more smaller and portable devices (as long as there’s an internet connection!). It also means that you don’t even have to be using your own machine to continue to work, in the event that you’ve forgotten it, or have run out of batteries, or using or borrowing someone else’s machine. Apple’s iDisk with their .mac accounts also allow for up to 10GB of storage on their virtual servers which can be accessed remotely.
With the web based applications, they do have their limitations. Some may be concerned about privacy issues, although apps such as Basecamp are being used securely by big corporations like NYSE, and paid subscriptions provide further protection with SSL security and encryption of your data.
The other limitation is that whilst it’s convenient to have your data is stored on a third party server, if their server goes down, then you won’t be able to access or work on your documents. Seems like an unlikely scenario, and in the few years that I’ve been using these apps, it only happens rarely. The last time was when a truck hit one of the transformers at the data centre! (Although service resumed within a couple of hours which wasn’t too bad).
So these are some of the web based applications that I’ve found invaluable when working and collaborating remotely online…hope others find them useful:)
8 Dave Taylor // Apr 4, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Nice one Nelson, yeah for me one of the big enablers for remote working has been D2 Networks internal web based tools.
Also a good VPN doesn’t go astray, so we have secure access to internal resources from whereever we are.
A lot of small companies have traditionally been unnable to utilise these types of tool due either to expense or complexity, however a lot of the home and SME manufacturers are producing great firewall devices that can perform a lot of these tasks.
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