Tech and life

I’ve been using MS Word for about 10 years and thought I knew most of its important features, but I didn’t know about the Spike!  I found out about this great feature recently in a blog post on Help Desk Geek. It allows you to quickly rearrange non-contiguous blocks of text or other items in your Word document. Basically, instead of using the simple cut and paste (Ctrl X, Ctrl-V) which I’m sure you’re all familiar with, you can use Word’s in-built Spike feature to ‘multiple cut’ items and then paste them all in order in a single operation.

Let me explain. The Spike allows you to add multiple selections (by cutting, not copying) to Word’s clipboard in the order you want, then to paste them all at once. So for example if you have an unordered list of say references which you want in alphabetical order, you just cut each selection in turn in the order you want using Ctrl-F3. They are added in that order to the Spike. No need to paste items individually, just keep adding your selections to the Spike. When you’ve finished cutting the items, you paste them all at once at your insertion point using Ctrl-Shift-F3.  Everything is pasted in one operation with all the selections in the order in which they were cut.

Try it out and see what you think. Definitely a time saver if you find yourself frequently rearranging selections in Word. And this feature works in all versions of Word from 97 to 2010. These are the main features of Spike but for a full how-to on using it, head over to the Help Desk Geek post. And let us know how you use the Spike in the comments.

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Image credit: quinn.anya

It’s possible to run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up with a completely free operating system, software and internet services… but do you? Are there any commercial packages or paid online services you consider ‘must-haves’? I thought I’d quickly run through my paid/free stance and I’d love to hear your thoughts although I don’t think we need to get into a discussion on ‘acquiring’ commercial software for free.

Free operating system

If you run a Linux system, you’ll be familiar with free operating systems and open source software. I run Ubuntu Netbook Edition on my Acer Aspire netbook and I’m just about to try out Linux Mint on my second desktop. What holds me back from completely moving to Linux is my day job where I have to be able to work on Microsoft Word files. More on that later. I’m running Windows 7 on one desktop. Of course in the Windows world, once you’ve bought the OS, you can run a completely free set-up too.

Free software

I run a small office/home office (SOHO) set-up and work from home. Pretty much all the software I use is free or open source. However, I do some work in the publishing sector and they still rely very much on Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Many authors submit work in Word doc format (rarely docx I find) and authors and publishers usually expect work to be returned in doc format with Track Changes turned on. It’s a real shame that open source software hasn’t really caught on in the publishing field yet. So I have to use Microsoft Office to cope with clients who use commercial software. Yes, you could convert Word doc format to Open Office Writer odt format, turn on track changes in Open Office Writer then convert back to doc format but there’s always a worry that some formatting/changes will be lost in conversion. So for work, I have to use MS Word on my desktop running Windows 7. There’s a good recent discussion on office software, free and commercial, at How-To Geek.

The only other paid software I use on my Windows system is an old copy of Serif PagePlus for DTP and Serif PhotoPlus for photo editing. I haven’t upgraded these in years – the old copies I have are just fine. But a quick look on the AlternativeTo website shows that I could move to Scribus as a free alternative for DTP and there are lots of free alternatives (software and online services) for photo editing.

But for many working from home on a Windows system, I’m sure it’s possible to find all you need if you look at free software alternatives and online services. By the way, I don’t believe it’s necessary to pay for security software either. If you’re running a Window system, Microsoft Security Essentials is free for you and is probably all you need for real-time protection. If you’re running a Linux system, you probably don’t need any antimalware software.

Free services

Every online service I use is free…so far, although I don’t expect it to remain that way in the future. We’ve had it good so far. Like many of you I’m sure, I use a good spread of Google apps. Yes, they’re free but the downside is targeted ads, which I don’t mind, and the knowledge that they’re building up a fair old archive of information on you. So I try to use good alternatives to Google services when I can.

So over to you. Do you use a free OS? Is there any commercial software you must have on your Windows system? What about online services – anything you’re paying for? Drop a comment below.

Do you pay for software and online services is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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If you spend a lot of time in Word like I do then quick access to commands is important. You can waste a lot of time moving around the ribbon. If you want to speed things up, rather than going through the ribbon to access commands which usually requires at least two clicks to get to your destination, you should look closely at the Quick Access Toolbar usually positioned at the top left of the screen next to the Office button. You can customise this toolbar and add all your frequently used commands. Using the drop-down bar at the end of the Quick Access Toolbar, navigate to More Commands. In the top drop-down box there you’ll probably see Popular Commands by default, but don’t be fooled here. You can change this to show All Commands and pick the ones you find most useful. Then click Add in the centre and they will be added to your customised bar layout on the right. You can rearrange them there using the arrows on the right.

Another tip is to use separators if you find the buttons on the final bar are too closely spaced. You’ll find Separators at the top of the menu of commands. You can also move the final toolbar above or below the ribbon again using the drop-down menu at the end of the toolbar.

Finally you can get quick keyboard access to this toolbar using the key combinations Alt-1, Alt-2, etc. for items from left to right on the toolbar.

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I’m constantly going to my file manager throughout the day, opening files from there, moving, copying and renaming. A good file manager has always been important to me, ever since my first experiences with a PC back in the 1980s, well before the dawn of Windows Explorer. I used a program called PC Tools for file management back then and when I moved to the Windows OS I used a file manager called PowerDesk Pro which has seen me right through to Windows XP. On and off, I’ve use Windows Explorer but never really fell in love with it – too many restrictions on what I want to do.

I’ve recently moved to Windows 7, so I looked around for a good free replacement file manager to take over from my aging copy of PowerDesk. As usual, my first port of call was my Diigo bookmarks to check out my ‘file managers’ tag. Had a look at Free Commander and didn’t like it much, then looked at xplorer2 Lite – the free version from zabkat which is fully compatible with Windows 7. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and found it’s a very able replacement for PowerDesk …and more. I find the free version has all the features I need for just now.

Some of the best features of xplorer2

One of the main features I need in a file manager is a very simple one. When I reopen the program I want it to have remembered which folder I was in when it was shut down – for my work I’m usually going back to the same work folder the next day so the ability to save settings on exit is really useful for me.  xplorer2 can also open multiple tabs as shown above, so you have quick access to a number of essential folders – again I find this a really useful feature. You can display the tabs at the top or the bottom of the window. Hit Ctrl-Ins to open a new tab. And you can rename tabs – right click and choose Rename. You can move or copy files by dragging them onto the tab of the destination folder. But if you don’t like multiple tabs in a window, you can set up quick access to all your favourite folders from the Bookmarks menu. And incidentally, you can set up FTP access for file transfers to your website or server again though your bookmarks. FTP access is explained in this excellent Lifehacker article which also gives a great summary of the program.

Filtering your list of files is easy. In the address bar, just type ‘*.jpg’ to list the jpeg files in that folder, or type ‘e*’ to list all files starting with the letter ‘e’. Incidentally, coloured folders as shown above on my Windows XP set-up isn’t a feature of xplorer2. That feature is from a free utility called Folder Marker Free. Once installed, just right click on a folder and change its colour.

I generally use the single pane interface (plus folder tree) as show above, but you can also have a dual pane set-up which is very handy for copying or moving files. I also like how you can  preview images, videos, pdfs and mp3s within xplorer2 using the Preview button at the top.

Another nice feature is the way it autorefreshes when you plug in an mp3 player or camera and the new drive shows up without having to press F5. PowerDesk didn’t do that.

Setting it up

I have it set up just the way I want it now. If you already use the program or want to try it out, here’s a list of the features I find useful and how to set them up:

1. Save program state on exit: Tools, Options, General tab and check Save program state on exit.
2. For single pane/double pane toggle: Ctrl-O.
3. To force file names ending in a number to list in ascending number order 1, 2, 3…10, 11, 12, rather than 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3… go to Tools, Options, Advanced tab and check Natural number sort.
4. To show folder in tree on left side, go to Tools, Options, Window tab and check Keep synchronized with folder in active view pane.
5. To allow slow double click renaming of files: Tools, Options, Window tab and check Allow slow double click to rename files.
6. To prevent truncation of file names when window is not maximized:  Tools, Options, Window tab and set Max list column width to 150 – although from reading the forums this doesn’t always work.

And there’s a good xplorer2 forum here.

I’ve only just scratched the surface here with the features I find useful.  Give xplorer2 a try and see what you think. You may find yourself quickly won over from Window Explorer.

Have you ever needed to annotate pdfs with your own notes, highlights, comments or corrections? Perhaps you’ve been asked by your boss for your comments on a document or to collaborate on corrections before releasing a final version. Perhaps you’re a student wanting a way to highlight important sections of your pdf or make notes in the margin. Or you’re at home, have read a great pdf and want to highlight important points or insert sticky notes before archiving it away in a notebook organizer such as Evernote. Well I’ve found just the app.

I have to collaborate on marking up and correcting pdfs at the moment. I was initially asked to compile a list of pdf corrections in a separate Word document detailing page number, column number, paragraph number and the correction. There had to be an easier and more productive way and I found it – PDF-XChange Viewer. There are paid versions for creation of pdfs but I found the free version is fine for my needs. Installation was simple – just watch the prompts during installation; you may not want it to be your default pdf viewer until you’re happy with it, so uncheck that box.

Annotating the pages just couldn’t be simpler. The Comment and Markup Tools menu is shown below to illustrate the tools available

You can highlight text in the colour of your choice, strikethrough or underline it, insert sticky notes, text callouts and text boxes, draw arrows and other symbols, draw with a pencil tool and erase the pencil annotation. The app is intuitive and quite easily set up the way you want it. For example, to change default annotation styles, just use the fly-out menus in the Tools menu shown above. If you want to change any style, just click on Show Comments Styles Pallet. Click the default style and modify it, or clone the style and modify it if you want to go back to the default style at some point. So, for example, you can set up a number of highlight colours for different purposes. You may want to change the default text size in text callouts and sticky notes. If you want to change the default text size, type the text in the font size you want , then right click on the text and choose Text Formatting and then Set Current Text Formatting as Default – or right click in the box and choose Set Current Appearance as Default.

Here’s an example of a pdf where I’ve insert a variety of sample annotations. No annotation has been added subsequently in the screenshot program.

You can show a comments list in the left margin and move through the comments and mark up that way. You can also export comments as an fdf file. Double clicking on this loads the comments and the original pdf in your default pdf reader. I haven’t tried it but presume that if you have to return corrections  or comments to someone, if they already have the pdf, all you have to do is email the (much smaller) fdf with the comments rather than a saved pdf. If they open the fdf they will be able to see your comments and corrections, make further changes and save the file.

You can rotate pages, or insert a number of different stamps over the document. You can search for text in the pdf using the standard Ctrl-F keyboard shortcut to put the cursor in the search box at the top. You can search for phrases and you can make the search case-sensitive. A nice feature is that if you have a number of pdfs open in tabs, when you hover over each tab you get a thumbnail view of each document. Another nice touch is that there’s a button to attach the active pdf directly to an email message. There’s also a function at the bottom right corner of the screen to open your default pdf viewer with the current pdf loaded.

All in all, a nice utility if you have to annotate your pdfs and well worth checking out. It would actually make a pretty good default free pdf reader.

Disclaimer – I haven’t been asked to write a review of this app and have not been paid for this post. I do not do paid reviews, but just like to find and blog about great apps, preferably free!

In Part 1, I mentioned some factors which we considered important when buying a laptop for college work. Now to install Vista and some software. As I already mentioned, my son’s Dell Inspiron 1545 came with Vista Home Premium and he’s entitled to a free upgrade to Windows 7 Premium in October, so with that in mind, we’ll probably do a fresh install when the new OS arrives. So I didn’t want to load up the machine at this stage, just install a suite of applications to see him through until Windows 7 arrived.

As I run Windows XP or Ubuntu on my machines, this was the first time I’d installed Vista so I was pleasantly surprised at how painless it was. In all, it took about 20 minutes to install the OS. Dell used to have a reputation for installing a fair amount of trialware and junk along with the OS – don’t think they’re as bad as they were, but anyway, the first thing I downloaded and installed was PC Decrapifier to remove all the applications and trialware we just didn’t need. Here’s a list of the stuff it can remove. Having removed the trialware security suite, I then added the free antivirus program which has served me well over the years, AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.5 and the spyware remover SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition. Adobe Reader came installed so I removed that and added my favourite pdf reader, Foxit Reader.

List of apps we installed

Firefox: my favourite browser

Firefox Plug-ins: Adblock Plus, All-in-One Sidebar, LastPass (this one’s absolutely essential)

SpeedyFox: to clean Firefox’s SQLite databases and help prevent it slowing down

CCleaner: an essential utility for PC maintenance

Recuva: to recover accidentally deleted files

Revo Uninstaller: for completely uninstalling apps

Skype: so we can keep in touch

PC Wizard 2009: for PC information

CD Burner XP: to burn CDs and DVDs

FastStone Image Viewer: for managing and quick editing of photos

Serif PagePlus: DTP app; the link is to the free version of this commercial app

Rainlendar: a nice desktop calendar with reminders and a to-do list

Microsoft Office: this is the only commercial software in the list; for a free office suite, OpenOffice is excellent

Change Caps Lock to Shift Key: remap the annoying Caps Lock key to a Shift key

The only additional things were to set up a GMail account for him and place a small batch file on the desktop for one-click backup of everything in the Documents folder to a USB stick and impress on him the importance of using it. I’m still looking into laptop security/theft apps such as LocatePC, Prey or LaptopLock and will update this post when we decide on one.

Finally, I thought for completeness, I’d throw in a couple of links to some excellent posts on web apps and services for students I’d bookmarked on Delicious:

Notely Helps Students Get Organized Online

The Ultimate Student Resource List

Best Web Applications and Resources for College Students

Back to School: 15 Essential Web Tools for Students

So which applications would you put on a student’s PC? What about web apps and services? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: stuartpilbrow

Ever been sent a file you can’t open? Or a friend has emailed a file to you that they are unable to open and hope you might be able to help? It happened to me yesterday. A friend had been sent a file which she couldn’t open and asked me to have a go. First impressions weren’t good – I didn’t recognise the extension – it was a pzf file – no, not a pdf! Double-clicking wouldn’t open it. However, I was eventually able to open it and save it as a pdf or a jpeg. The process I went through on a Windows system might be instructive so I’ve set it out here.

What kind of file is it?

Well, I could have googled ‘pzf’ but I already knew about the website FILExt, a site which lists file extensions and what possible programs can open them, so I went straight there. Turns out that pzf is most likely a GraphPad Prism file, a scientific graphing program, although FILExt did indicate another less likely possibility as well. Ominously, the site said that pzf files could only be opened by Prism, which I didn’t have.

Can I convert it?

I googled ‘pzf file conversion‘. Apart from professional data recovery services, there didn’t appear to be a freeware app which might convert this file type. I had a look at my Delicious bookmarks. For online file conversion, I found File2.ws which claimed to be able to convert virtually any file into a public online web page, but alas, it didn’t work for pzf files (but it might work for your file). Convert.Files and Zamzar also didn’t support this format. I had a quick look at the free file conversion applications on my PC – SUPER and FormatFactory but both were for media files and again didn’t support pzf format.

Look for a free file viewer

I then had a look at free file viewers. Universal Viewer and its plug-ins can open many different file types but not pzf (again, it might work for your file). I also tried Irfanview but again even with its plug-ins, still no luck. However, proprietary software occasionally have free or trial viewers and in this case, the FILExt website indicated that the free Prism Viewer was available to open GraphPad Prism files. It’s possible to view or print the file with this utility but not make any changes. Another file viewer you could try is Explorer View which has a 30-day free trial.

Save the opened file in a different format

Now that we can open our file to view it or print it, it would be nice to be able to save it in a more useful format which can be opened by everyday free apps so we can refer to it again without any trouble. Well, once opened, you can easily save a file in pdf format using any one of a number of virtual PDF printer drivers. I use doPDF – I’ve mentioned it before in my Miscellany of Tech Tips. After installation, this appears in your Print menu so, in any app you can print from, you now have the option to print to a pdf format file. To convert to pdf format, you just have to print the document to doPDF rather than to your printer.

Now that your document is in a familiar format, you can convert it to another format if necessary, e.g. JPEG, PNG or GIF. However, I found it hard to track down a freeware pdf-to-jpeg converter. Some applications are trial only and leave a watermark on your output jpeg file, others require Adobe Acrobat to be installed first. However, there are online file conversion sites like Zamzar that will do the pdf-to-jpeg conversion for you. What I also discovered was that, if I opened the file on my PC in my preferred free pdf viewer, Foxit Reader, I could choose the Snapshot tool (Tools, Snapshot), and outline an area to save to the clipboard. Now open an image viewing program like Irfanview, paste in your snapshot (Ctrl-V) and click File, Save as to save the snapshot as a jpeg file.

So, given a file you can’t open, it should be possible to convert it to a more familiar format using the process I’ve outlined. How do you open an unusual file format?  Any formats that have completely stumped you? Any tips to pass on? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: Lazurite

As some of you may be aware, Windows users in Europe have been offered a great deal to move up to the Windows 7 operating system. Since July, UK users have been able to pre-order the full version of Windows 7 for less than the cost of the upgrade version. According to a Guardian article back in June, typically, a Windows upgrade for Vista Home Premium would cost £79.99 and the full version would cost £169.99. Initially, the plan was to sell Windows 7 in Europe without the Internet Explorer browser, but according to the Windows Team Blog recently:

For customers who have already pre-ordered the full version of Windows 7 E in the EU – either as part of special pre-order offers or otherwise – they will receive full versions of Windows 7 that include Internet Explorer 8. These customers, and any other customer who pre-orders Windows 7 before upgrade versions are available on September 1, will still be able to get upgrade pricing for Windows 7 full versions.

I’ve just ordered Windows 7 Home Premium (full version) from Amazon in the UK for £64.98 (at current exchange rates – 27 August – that works out at 73.78 euro, USD105 or AUD126.63). I still run Windows XP so wouldn’t normally qualify for an upgrade price so I just couldn’t pass up that offer.

So if you pre-order before September 1, you will get upgrade pricing on the full Windows 7 version – well worth checking out, particularly if you are running XP, or an older Windows OS.

Now I have to look into a 1TB hard drive for my new OS!

Update: 4th September – Amazon UK are still pricing the full version of Windows 7 Home Premium at £64.98. I’ll try and update this with any price changes. I’m watching the page with Follow That Page.

Update: 2nd October – UK students with a valid university email address can get Windows 7 Home Premium for £30. Further details here.

Update: 21st October – Amazon UK are now pricing the full version of Windows 7 Home Premium at £114.98.

Image credit: brunkfordbraun

I’ve been following the tech scene for about 2 years now since I discovered tech podcasts. Although I had reasonable tech knowledge before this, mostly from browsing tech forums, I found that listening to tech podcasts and subscribing to tech blogs in Google Reader uncovered many tech tips and great advice, and some of the best tips keep coming up again and again. I’ve tried to gather together some of the best that I can remember. If you’re a geek you’ll have heard most before, but for the tech beginner, hopefully there’s some useful advice here. I’ve tried to keep each tip as short and concise as possible. Just use Google to get lots of additional info.

Essentials

1. First and foremost, back up your data regularly. This can’t be stressed enough. Sooner or later, your hard drive will die and you don’t want all your photos, etc to die with it. Back all your data up to an external drive, or to one of a host of free online services like DropBox. If you’ve a lot of data, have a look at Carbonite, a paid service. Better still, image or clone your hard drive regularly onto an external drive using a product like Acronis True Image so you can quickly get back up and running after a disk disaster. I’ve written a how-to on avoiding a disk disaster.

2. Second and also really important, always use secure passwords online: long and with a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, never dictionary words. Don’t use the same password on multiple sites. Use a program like LastPass to manage your passwords. It’s free and will also help with filling out online forms.

3. Have a rescue CD to hand so that if you are caught with a non-booting drive, you can at least try to get your data off. A Knoppix CD or the Ultimate Boot CD may do the trick. And before disaster strikes, make sure your PC will boot off the CD drive when a CD is inserted at boot-up. You may have to change the boot order in the BIOS so that the PC boots off the CD first.

4. Make sure you always have a firewall enabled on your PC.

Hardware

1. If you’re using the default router username and password, change them immediately. The default settings are all commonly known and listed here or here. So anyone with this knowledge can effectively hack into your PC if you have a wireless router and they are in range.

2. Uncheck all unnecessary programs launching at startup. To do this in Windows XP, click on Start, Run and enter msconfig in the box. Then click the Startup tab and uncheck any programs you don’t need at startup. Google any you are not sure of. Or use the excellent free utility CCleaner to disable startup programs. Click the Tools tab on the left then the Startup button. Revo Uninstaller can also disable startup programs through its Autorun Manager.

3. Get as much RAM as you can into your PC, 2GB or more if possible. Use the Crucial System Scanner to check what type of memory you need and how much you can fit.

4. Disable the annoying Caps Lock key. Here’s a short how-to.

5. By all accounts, many PC users, particularly in the US, seem to suffer from dust and dirt clogging up the fans, etc. and causing overheating problems which can damage your PC. It’s well worthwhile unplugging your PC, removing the side panel, taking it outside and carefully blowing out all the dust and dirt before you do permanent damage to your system. If you found a lot of dust, clean it regularly.

6. When using you laptop with the mains cable plugged in, take great care not to strain or loosen the power jack by for example by tugging or tripping over the mains cable. Treat that connection with great care. Once the connection shears from the motherboard you’ll only have hours of battery life left before a trip to your local computer repair shop is needed – and they mightn’t be keen on doing this type of repair.

Software

1. Firefox is a great multi-platform browser, particularly because of the vast amount of extensions which improve the user experience. Don’t load up too many plugins though or you’ll slow it down.

2. Don’t use the bulky Adobe Reader to open pdfs. Lightweight, free Foxit Reader is fine.

3. Thunderbird is a great multi-platform email client.

4. If you haven’t tried Skype, sign up for it. You can make free calls from PC to PC with this. If you both have webcams you can make free video calls – excellent for keeping in touch with friends and family abroad. Our daughter is away at college now and Skype is invaluable for keeping in touch.

5. VLC is a great multi-platform media player. It’ll play virtually anything you throw at it.

6. You don’t have to spend money on commercial software. Products like OpenOffice are really excellent, multi-platform free solutions and suitable for most things you might want to do. You can even open and edit pdfs in OpenOffice Writer.

7. There are many free utilities to convert Word documents to pdfs. I use doPDF which effectively prints your doc to a pdf file.

8. CCleaner is an essential free utility for a Windows PC for deleting temporary files, history, cookies, etc. Use BleachBit on a Linux machine.

9. Use the free utility Recuva to recover deleted files.

10. Revo Uninstaller is a great free utility that does a thorough job of getting rid of installed applications and the junk that they can sometimes leave behind.

11. Two great Windows anti-spyware programs are SUPERAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes. Free AVG is a good antivirus program, but if you’re careful where you go on the net, you may not need any of them – particularly if you’re using a Linux distribution as your OS.

12. Evernote is great for collecting web clippings, etc. Give it a try. Doesn’t support Linux yet though.

Online services

1. GMail is a great spam filter. Route all your email account inboxes through GMail. I’ve been doing this for over a year now and I find it almost never puts genuine mail in the spam folder and is brilliant at filtering out any imported spam emails. In addition, it won’t import any email when it identifies a virus in an attachment. Excellent.

2. If you’re search on Google isn’t getting the results you wanted, try searching for exact keyword phrases by putting your keyword phrase in inverted commas – or use the exact phrase box in Google Advanced Search. I use this a lot so I always have Google Advanced Search loading up in one tab when I launch Firefox.

3. XMarks is great for syncing your browser bookmarks between all your PCs.

Operating systems

1. By all accounts, Windows 7 is going to be a great OS. Upgrade to it when you can.

2. Don’t be afraid to try Linux, particularly Ubuntu if you’re a beginner. Although things are done slightly differently from Windows, it really is well worth trying out and it isn’t hard to use. You may well decide to switch from Windows afterwards. You may be able to use Wine to get some of your favourite Windows programs running on Linux.

General

1. If you have to put your email address on your website, make sure to cloak it so it’s not picked up by spammers. Use a service like HideText to do this. Better still, use a contact form on your webpage.

2. Subscribe to @makeuseof in Twitter for lots of useful info on web applications and services.

3. Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog!

That’s all I can think of for the moment – I’ll come back and add additional tips when I think of them. Drop a comment if you have a great tech tip to share.

Oh and by the way, if this article has whetted your appetite for tech tips, have a look at David Pogue’s great article (and the comments) for even more useful tips.

Laptops and more recently netbooks have made us increasingly able to take our digital life on the road. I bought a netbook back in January but as I work from home, I don’t get much chance to go mobile. However, holidays are coming up this week and we’re all off to the west of Ireland. So I’m taking my Acer Aspire One netbook + Easy Peasy Linux with me, not to work, but to try and keep in touch with the tech blogs and hopefully to fire off the occasional tweet.

Problem is, I know there isn’t broadband where I’m staying in Ireland. I’m going to have to look out for wifi hotspots in cafes and bars in the area but I just don’t know how widespread they are yet down Ireland’s west coast. Googling and hotspot locator websites don’t seem to bring up many in the right areas for me. Guess I’ll soon find out.

So I may only be able to connect up say 2 or 3 times in 2 weeks and even then perhaps not for long. So what’s the best solution here to keep in touch? Googling ‘offline browsing’ bring up lots of possibilities but perhaps the most useful to me is Google Gears, particularly as there’s a Linux version for my netbook.

This will allow me to fetch the latest 2000 RSS items to Google Reader when I have a connection and browse through them later in offline mode. When I ran a test of what’s being downloaded by Gears, I noticed that for me, this seems to fetch about a week’s worth of posts. It’s a pity that there isn’t more control on this as I would have liked to fetch a few months worth to be able to browse back through stuff I’d bookmarked but hadn’t really had a chance to read.

So what about the occasional miserably wet days when it’s not possible to venture out into the great outdoors and you’re stuck without a connection? Well, I found this program called HTTrack, again with a Linux version, which allows you to download whole websites to your netbook to browse offline.

Installation was a breeze on the netbook. Just go to the terminal and type:

apt-get update
apt-get install webhttrack

Great, so I’ve picked out three or four great Ubuntu websites which I’ve discovered recently and downloaded them so now I can browse way back to my heart’s content and look at all the earlier posts offline.

So hopefully the combination of Google Reader+Gears and HTTrack will be able to feed my digital addiction while on holiday. What programs do you have on your netbook or laptop for offline browsing and keeping in touch on the road or on holidays? Am I missing anything useful here?