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From: John Callahan (no email)
Date: Sun Aug 04 2002 - 14:59:02 EDT
I use my boat as an office and have for the last three-an-a-half
years.
I am not out cruising so I can "cheat" and keep some of my equipment
on shore in a storeroom. Yesterday, for example, I took my flatbed
scanner back to my storeroom. I only need the scanner occasionally so
this works for me.
Computers
I have only laptop computers. I sold my last desktop systems in
January of 1999, just before I moved aboard. For my purposes -- I'm a
writer and do mostly word processing -- laptop computers powerful
enough for the jobs I need to do. I also do most of my work sitting
in a comfortable chair with my feet up and a computer on my lap so
laptops work fine for me.
I normally have to upgrade the hard disks on my laptop systems. I
have three laptops with current disk capacities of 10GB, 18GB and
32GB. If I were buying another laptop I'd insist on a minimum of a
20GB hard drive and would be more comfortable with a 30GB or 40GB.
Currently I have only IBM ThinkPads, but I know that other people may
have other brand preferences. I have an auto/air adapter for each of
my ThinkPads so I can recharge the batteries using a cigarette
lighter plug in my boat or car.
I have computer cases for each of my laptops. One is small and hold
only the ThinkPad 560Z, a four-pound laptop, and a spare battery. The
others are quite large. Each large case stores a laptop computer and
one of my portable printers as well as sundry other items such as
cables, spare batteries and spare inkjet cartridges.
I have also bought an item called the laptop desk
(http://www.lapworksinc.com/). I sometimes use the laptop desk when I
have a laptop on my lap, particularly on hot days. However, where I
find the laptop desk most useful is when I want to use my laptop on a
table or desk. The laptop desk has adjustments that allow me to tilt
the system upward to an angle that makes typing comfortable when I'm
sitting at a desk or table.
Printers
For about three years I used a Hewlett-Packard 870c inkjet printer
that I brought from shore connected to the print server on my BAN
(boat area network). This year I decided that the HP printer was
taking up too much valuable space and took it to my storeroom. I've
switched completely to portable printers. I have two, a Canon BJC-70,
which I've had for many years, and a Canon BJC-50, which I bought a
few months ago. Each printer has its advantages.
The BJC-50 is very small and has an internal lithium ion battery and
an infrared port, so I don't normally plug this printer into AC power
except to charge the battery occasionally. I have never used the
parallel cable. I always print using the infrared port on the BJC-50.
The downside of the BJC-50 is that the paper feed is cumbersome. You
have to feed the pages through one at a time. This would drive me
crazy if I had to print more than a couple of pages at a time. (There
is an optional sheet feeder attachment for the BJC-50, but it can be
difficult to find in retail or mail order outlets and it more than
doubles the size of the printer. This sheet feeder costs about
$50.00. I don't have one so I can't tell you how well it works.)
The BJC-70, which is no longer manufactured, does not have an
infrared port so I have to hook it up to the parallel port on my
computer, which is a pain if I only need to print a couple of pages
or a label or envelope. The BJC-70 paper feed holds up to 30 sheets
so is much better for printing multi-page documents. The BJC-70 has
no internal battery, so normally you need AC power to use it. A small
inverter would probably power this printer. There is an optional
battery attachment, which costs about $100. I have this battery
attachment. It adds about one-third to the size of the BJC-70. It
uses a NiMH battery, which does not last as long as the lithium ion
battery in the BJC-50.
Both printers are excellent for addressing envelopes and labels, two
places many printers fall down.
If I were buying a portable printer now I would buy the Canon BJC-85.
This is an updated version of the BJC-70 with the same paper feed
mechanism. The BJC-85 uses a USB interface rather than a parallel
interface for the cable connection to your computer. The BJC-85 has
an infrared port so you may never need to use the USB cable. If you
need battery operation, you can use the same battery attachment that
is used by the BJC-70.
If you do a lot of printing ink jet printers, particularly the
portable ones, will just kill you on supplies costs. I buy all my ink
cartridges and print heads for my Canon printers on ebay auctions
(http://www.ebay.com), where I can usually get them for half or less
of what I would pay in a retail establishment.
Backup
I have multiple computers. Each computer has a PCMCIA Ethernet card.
I synchronize all of the data files at least once a week between the
three computers that I actively use. I use xxcopy
(http://www.xxcopy.com), a free DOS-based utility that is very fast.
It takes some time to develop the proper scripts and test them. After
that, since the scripts are saved them as batch files, backup is
painless. (If backup isn't painless, it doesn't get done.)
I nearly always take one of the computers to shore when I leave the
boat. I also have a very old ThinkPad that lives in my storeroom.
This old ThinkPad also has a PCMCIA Ethernet card. Every couple of
weeks, when I visit my stuff, I'll synchronize the data files of one
of the actively used laptops the ThinkPad in my storeroom. That way I
have an off-premises backup of my data files that is relatively
recent.
In the past I've used a Zip drive for backup but my data files are
now too large for the 100MB drive that I have.
If I were out cruising, I would buy a CD-RW drive for backup. I would
make two backups on CD-RW every week. I would keep one and mail one
to my mother on shore. It may be inconvenient to wait a week or more
to be able to recover my data files but that's far better than not
being able to recover them at all.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
John Callahan
Aboard M/V Amy
Somewhere in Puget Sound
At 08:35 AM 8/3/02 -0700, Jay Gitomer wrote:
>If anyone is working out of an office on their boat,
>I'd appreciate any insight you have into what works
>best regarding equipment maintenance, ergonomics,
>storage, unique requirements, etc.
>
>Thanks!
>Jay
>
>
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