Sprint MobileHotSpotThe Sprint MiFi 2200 is a

portable router that can provide

3G broadband connections for

up to five computers or other

Wi-Fi-enabled devices (cell

phones, iPod Touch, Nokia

Tablets, Archos, Nintendo DS,

etc.) at the same time. MiFi

wirelessly connects the devices

to the EVDO Rev A Sprint

Mobile Broadband Network.

Sprint also supports the MiFi’s

GPS capabilities along with

location and mapping applica-

tions. Sprint’s Location Based

Services will plot onto Google

maps nearby locations like

banks, hospitals, gas stations,

restaurants, etc. And it’s small—

weighing about two ounces, it’s

approximately the size of a cou-

ple of stacked credit cards

(3.50" 5 2.32" 5 0.35"). The

internal CDMA and Wi-Fi anten-

nas are Wi-Fi B and G compati-

ble, and the security includes

WPA2-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected

Access), WEP (Wired Equivalent

Privacy), and SPI (Stateful Packet

Inspection) firewalls. The internal

battery will provide up to four

hours of run time and 40 hours

of standby. The battery is Lithium-

Ion and is user replaceable. A

micro-USB connection lets you

run the MiFi with an AC adapter

when you’d rather save the bat-

tery. Works with Windows,

Macs, Linux devices—just about

anything that can utilize Wi-Fi.

www.sprint.com/mifi

WaterFieldSleeve for NetbooksWith the new, much smaller

netbooks outselling laptops, it’s

time we looked at some scaled-

down accessories for this new

computing format. With an

average 10-inch screen, net-

books thump around in the con-

ventional gear or saddlebag, so

we first looked at netbook

cases. They’re called

sleeves because you

carry these computers

around like books,

and the sleeve is any-

thing from a thin

cloth covering to a

padded case. A netbook in a

sleeve can be dropped into a

larger, more conventional case

if you prefer. The best that we

saw and tested is the WaterField

sleeve, manufactured in San

Francisco and sold at

www.sfbags.com. The guy who

designs the bags, company

founder Gary Waterfield, is a

former bike messenger, and his

instincts for what makes a good

bag come out of that experi-

ence. The WaterField SleeveCase

for netbooks is available in

more than 80 sizes, customized

for your particular netbook. The

inside is cushioned with high-

grade, dense neoprene, and the

outer shell is made of ballistic

nylon. That’s not just a descrip-

tive. The fabric is an industrial-

grade, custom-woven, water-

proof, pre-Kevlar bulletproof

nylon. A heavy fold-over Velcro

strap keeps the computer in the

bag, and a loop on the bottom

is for your thumb when you’re

sliding the computer out into

your other hand. The back of the

case has a full-width pocket for

papers or a couple of thumb

drives (tie the lanyards to the

strap loops). You can get just

the sleeve, or you can add a

shoulder strap, a flap, and/or a

pouch. The quality of the bag is

excellent as is the design.

Netbooks: TheMissing ManualRight now, there are two basic

operating systems for netbooks—

Windows XP and Linux in a

couple of different flavors—so

the learning curve isn’t going to

be strenuous for most users. But

because netbooks are designed

for browsing and communicat-

ing, it’s a good idea to pick up a

copy of O’Reilly’s Netbooks: The

Missing Manual. There is no

optical drive (CD-DVD) on these

small computers, so the pro-

grams you’ll be adding will find

their way in through an online

connection or one of the several

USB ports. Likewise, backups

might be handled differently

than you are used to on your

desktop. And keep in mind,

these machines were designed

for “ether computing,” and that

means the cloud is often the

logical place to begin and end.

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58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Nove m b e r 2 0 0 9

The O’Reilly manual will guide

you with simple, thorough walk-

throughs and explanations. And

if you get a digital copy when

you purchase the hard copy, you

can carry the book with you on

your netbook—the digital copy

weighs next to nothing, just the

electrons in the chips and the

light on the screen. The book

opens with advice about buying

netbooks, then guides you

through the setup, connecting

devices, getting online, e-mail

and browsing, business pro-

grams, collaboration/communi-

cation programs, music and

media, security, and trou-

bleshooting. www.oreilly.com

Traklogg MileageRecorderTraklogg Mileage Recorder is

an automatic GPS mileage-

recording device that keeps

track of your travels for

expense reporting and taxes.

The pocket-size device holds

100+ hours of mileage data

and will run for more than 20

hours before recharging. It

records start and stop loca-

tions; logs date, time, and trav-

el duration; and plugs into your

PC to download the data onto

the Traklogg Dashboard Man-

ager. The Dashboard supports

multiple vehicles and clients,

creates custom reports, calcu-

lates mileage reimbursements,

and displays trips using Google

Earth. A MyTrips subscription-

based online service offers

enhanced storage and data

arrangement. Visit the company

at www.traklogg.com.

People like to project their ideas and feelings onto just

about everything. Life’s less threatening that way. Well,

that might make new places and things more comfort-

able, but when you apply that kind of furniture arranging

with new electronic purchases, you could be setting your-

self up for some serious underutilization, and you might

be wasting money besides.

Consider the following example. Your Palm PDA final-

ly gives up its tired little circuits, so you go out and look

for a replacement. When you see and pick up an iPod

Touch at the store, you decide that with this item’s almost

unlimited programs and that great screen, it could fill the

gap and more.

So, right out of the box, you work toward making it do

what your Palm did. You read the first couple of pages of

the manual, enough to get it charged and running, and

then you put the instructions aside. You learn how to

navigate without a stylus and begin to download all the

apps you were used to on your old pocket companion—

contacts, calendar, calculator, memos, solitaire, and

Sudoku. A month later, you haven’t moved much beyond

the parameters that you accepted on your previous

device. You just have more of the same—10 games

instead of three and three different notepads—but you

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, Skype, 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

Netbooks—A First Look

By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

continued on next page

TECH FORUM

Nove m b e r 2 0 0 9 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59

for user blogs for the device—nothing like enthusiastic ama-

teurs to show you what you might be missing. And once you

have it comfortably doing what you think you wanted it to

do, stop and consider. What else is there? If you’re like most

of us, much of what your new whatever can do is left unex-

amined. Don’t project a set of prescribed limits—let it

define itself for you.

NETBOOKS—A PRACTICAL LAB

With the kind of growth netbooks have shown (up more

than 75% this year as laptops fell about 32%), it was time to

take a closer look to see why they’re doing so well. But there

were a couple of preconceived notions that were hard to

avoid because these computers look exactly like a conven-

tional laptop except for their size. Bob O’Donnell, a tech

analyst with IDC, notes that the price and portability have

“shaken up the market in terms of who the

leading players are” while at the same time

“shaking up consumers’ expectations

around what computers can be.” So he saw

something essentially different in these

computers. And then there’s the now some-

what famous comment from Linus Torvalds,

inventor of the Linux operating system. In

an interview at the Linux Conference in Tas-

mania this year, Torvalds said, “I’ve actually long

been in the camp of people who think that laptops

should be small and light and not to be used as desktop

replacements. So I think that netbooks are really just laptops

done right.”

While a netbook looks like something you’re already very

familiar with, that’s one analyst who says that they shed new

light on what computers can be and a programming wizard

who says they have established a unique standard for what a

laptop should be.

For one other layer of presumptions, netbooks seem to

have evolved out of Nicholas Negroponte’s great social

experiment, the OLPC (the One Laptop Per Child). These

computers for children in the third world were supposed to

be cheap (originally $100), durable, and networked out to

the Internet and to other kids in the classroom or village.

You have to travel a considerable distance to trace the lin-

eage of that green-and-white boxy computer swinging at a

kid’s side as he walks a dusty path to school down to the

netbook (around $350) with its glossy, elegant design

and sophisticated engineering safely stowed in a leather

saddlebag—but they are connected.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The computer used in this review is an Asus Eee 1005HA. It

weighs about two pounds, has a 10-inch screen, an Intel

Atom Processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. The

finish is very nice, and the build is solid.

By putting aside expectations—what’s good and bad with

normal laptops—the netbook does emerge as something

different.

To begin with, the three most obvious differences with

the Asus netbook are the bright, very sharp screen; a key-

board that’s close enough to full size (92%) to need no

adjustment; and its very small overall size. It truly is like car-

rying a book—and not a notebook—because the footprint

is much smaller than a sheet of 8.5" 5 11" paper.

But next to size, the most important characteristic would

have to be the battery. This small computer will run six or

seven hours on a charge. It took a couple of

weeks of regular use to have the importance

of that sink in. I’m used to working on lap-

tops that are often plugged in because they

will only last a couple of hours away from

an outlet. I haven’t once used the Asus

plugged in. With its wireless Inter-

net connection, it’s cordless

and untethered—virtually

all of the time. I only plug

it in to charge when I’m done with it.

As with all things digital, a netbook is what it does. Its

primary reason for being is to connect to the Internet.

Like the OLPC, all the other things it does are secondary.

There are two obvious clues that help lead to this conclu-

sion. First, there’s the name “netbook.” Second, there’s no

optical drive (no CD-DVD). You import programs with

your browser. You can also use any of the multiple USB

ports to connect to an external optical drive, but that’s a

workaround.

The Asus that this column is being typed on came with a

trial version of Office 2007, but I cast off that land line and

now use Adobe Buzzword, a really elegant free word pro-

cessing program, and Google Docs. Both are cloud applica-

tions, and after loading up an RSS reader and connecting

out to several library systems, the obvious sunk in. This

thing is really different. In fact, this is my first cloud com-

puter. And the reason it feels so different is because it’s not a

notebook at all—it’s a cloudbook.

Next month we’ll take a closer look at how to outfit your

netbook for the new stratosphere in computing. SF

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