This week in Mobile News Manor #11: Phone as laptop
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This column is my look back each week to share pertinent experiences that I believe you might find useful. There is no telling what you might find in this column, but you’ll definitely get a feel for what it is like testing gadgets for a living. Welcome to the Manor.
The gadgets
While the slice battery option of the X220 yields a whopping 15+ hours of battery life, I leave it at home for day trips. The 6-cell battery on the notebook is giving me a solid 7-8 hours of battery life, so the slice is not needed. The notebook is a svelte 3 pounds with the 6-cell, which fits almost flush in the body of the X220. I can head out for the day with the ThinkPad in hand without concern about needing to find a power outlet, leaving the power brick at home. This laptop is the epitome of what mobile computing is all about, as it has the portable form without a compromise in capability.
This week I continued my evaluation of the Motorola Atrix 4G with the laptop dock, and I am impressed with the functionality of the duo the more I use it. I wanted to test it in the real world, so one day this week I used only the Atrix and laptop dock to do all of my work. I figured it was the only way to put it to the test and it fared better than I expected.
My day of the Atrix was not without frustration, as the combo exhibits occasional performance lags. I quickly learned to keep simultaneous activity to a minimum. The Atrix can multitask like any Android phone, but when driving the high-res display of the laptop dock things frequently bogged down. I was able to do everything I normally do at the desktop while using just the Atrix/laptop dock, so it impressed me in that regard. While it is not something I would want to do every day, it would be adequate for occasional business trips. My experiment makes me think the Atrix/laptop dock combination could be a competitor to the Google Chrome OS notebooks that are coming to market soon.
App of the week and a free Ebook »
App of the week
One of my most-used apps on the Android platform is Thinking Space Pro. TSP is a mind-mapping tool that is designed to use the touch interface of Android phones to good benefit. It works especially well on the larger display of the Galaxy Tab, and an update this week makes it even better.
The developer of TSP makes frequent improvements to the app, and the latest is a real doozy. An on-screen set of toolbars provides easy access to commonly performed tasks, yet keeps them off the screen until needed. A simple tap on a translucent icon brings the toolbars up around the left and bottom edges of the screen, and a second tap sends them away. This leaves the entire display available for the actual mind map, which is very appreciated.
I have Thinking Space Pro running on my Galaxy Tab all of the time, and it just keeps getting better for productive work. There is a free version available with limited features, and the Pro version is £3.00.
Ebook of the week
This week I continued reading Best Little Stories from the Civil War: More than 100 true stories by Kelly C. Brian. It is rare that a book occupies me for longer than a week, but this collection of true stories from the Civil War is so extensive it has kept me immersed in the period. It is easily the best free book I have ever gotten from Amazon. It is a fascinating look at the Civil War through the eyes of hundreds of people actually on the scene, and is highly recommended.
That's a wrap
That was my week in Mobile News Manor, I hope you found something to take away with you. I believe this weekly column is unique in form, as it covers anything and everything that crossed the threshold of my home office.