My 3 year old iPad! Still going strong!

The Apple iPad is attracting a lot of attention. I know that there are a few VERY exclusive people who have iPad's to try. However, the ordinary consumer will have to wait 60 days before being able to get their hands on one of them. Let alone those of us who live in places like South Africa where it will probably take another year before Apple releases the iPad with 3G! Still, I love my iPhone 3G and would LOVE an iPad 3G!

If I had the money I would pre-order one! However, there are a few more pressing priorities at the moment. So, I have come to appreciate what I already own - I have a 3 year old iPad (in South Africa.... Sort of!)! And, what I own is Sony Vaio UX 180 P.

This photo was taken when I was attending the Oxford Institute at Christ Church, Oxford University in August 2007.

My little portable computer is a Sony Vaio UX 180 P. It is a Windows XP device with a touch screen, a 30 gigabyte hard drive, 512MB or ram, wifi, bluetooth and a 3 hour battery life. It is the perfect travelers computer! It is smaller than a DVD case, in fact small enough to put into a big pocket on one's 'cargo pants'!

It runs a 'normal' operating system and 'normal' versions of MS Word, MS Outlook and the google Chrome browser. This means that I can simply plug in my backup USB flash disk that has copies of all of my documents and files on it and work away! Moreover, since it has a USB port I can connect to the internet using my 3G modem wherever I am and get my email, browse the web, and even use MS Outlook to connect to corporate server.

In this picture you'll see the iPod I owned in 2007, my old Nokia phone (a great big brick!), the UX 180 is docked in its docking station (that adds a VGA port, firewire, ethernet, and 4 USB 2.0 ports). You will also see my batterygeek external battery (this battery gives me an amazing 20 hours of battery life for the UX 180! On my Macbook Pro it gives me an additional 5-6 hours). I also have a cheap foldable Bluetooth keyboard that I can use with the UX 180 P.

So, until the iPad arrives, (and of course until I get some royalties for my books and don't have a washing machine to fix, kids school activities to pay for, a car to service and a few other pressing things to pay for), I shall be using my UX 180 P as a 'road warrior' computer!

Just as a final note - if you have not yet used dropbox it is a MUST HAVE for a person who uses more than one computer. Dropbox is a free service (for 2 Gigabytes of backup, after which you can choose to upgrade your space for a fee). You install a small application (which I have on my Macbook, my iPhone and my UX 180 P), then it creates a folder in your documents folder. Any file that you drag into that folder gets updated on Dropbox (you can even log into dropbox if you don't have your computer with you, and download the file you want to work on and then update it!)

While I was working on my most recent book 'Transform your work life: Turn your ordinary day into an extraordinary calling' (Struik Christian Media, 2010 - the book is due out in May), I used this little tool (in conjunction with my Macbook and my UX 180)! If I found that I was waiting to go into a meeting and the person I was meeting was running late I simply connected did some editing and knew that when I got back to my office the most up to date version of the file would ALWAYS be on my computer! Moreover, if my computers got stolen, or my house burnt down at least I would have backups of these (and other) critical documents 'in the cloud'.

I would suggest you consider using dropbox - it is free! OK, back to work for me! And then when I've done editing the article I'm working on I'm going to hop into bed with the Amazon Kindle application for Windows on my UX 180 P and continue reading Malcom Gladwell's new book 'What the dog saw'!