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The world is abuzz about the pending iPad and it’s pre-orders. Everyone is talking about the Microsoft Courier. You love your iPhone/Droid/Blackberry. You constantly search around for bigger, better devices that will do almost everything in the world. In this “buy-buy-buy” haze, have you forgotten the love for your laptop?
A laptop is a versatile tool. When people talk about user experience on new gadgets, they distract people from an important point – you already know how to use a laptop. A laptop can fit in a small bag and go anywhere you want it to. It’s never as flashy or as impressive as one of these new gadgets, but are you just paying for the flashiness? The status? Aren’t we over that in this country?
Over the past few years of developing into the Nerd that you see before you today, I learned how to push a laptop to do almost anything. It boasts an impressive array of features that we’ve all forgotten about. Today, I want to remind you of all the things your laptop can do, and hopefully inspire some of you to hang on to that relic instead of swiping that credit card for another gadget purchase, or dipping into your hard-earned savings. But first, here are the specs on my laptop, so that you know I’m not talking about some super-laptop that you can’t afford:
This is a dual-core, 1.60GHz Toshiba Satellite laptop with 1.5GB of RAM. It has an 80GB hard drive. I bought it with Vista and downgraded to XP about a year and a half later. This setup cost me about $700 when I bought it in 2007, and a quick search on Newegg.com pops up a computer with twice as much memory and a hard drive FOUR times as large as mine for under $400. Honestly, this computer blows mine out of the water, and it cost almost half as much as I paid for mine.
So here’s the list, in absolutely no particular order. I sat down and jotted down all the things I can use my laptop for, so this is a “stream of consciousness”-type list. A quick editor’s note: I’m not dumb. This list assumes moderate maintenance (i.e., running CCleaner about once a week, having a free antivirus application running at all times), Windows XP (though you don’t need XP for most of this stuff), and a decent internet connection.
It’s the flashiest feature of them all right now – read books on a screen! The iPad will have books! Well, you don’t need to buy a new gadget for this necessarily. Barnes And Noble and Amazon both offer free software for reading books on your computer, so if you want to buy ebooks, go right ahead! Better yet, visit Project Guternberg and download over 100,000 free ebooks from the public domain if you want.
This is probably the feature I use the least, since you can’t compare the ease on the eyes of a book compared to an LCD screen. This is one place I think the iPad will fail, and why, if you’re a heavy reader, I actually would recommend getting a dedicated e-reader. The e-ink technology is much, much easier on the eyes.
I’ve written at length about how you can use your computer as your television, and even hook it up to your TV. But also, for quick show-watching on the go, just visit a site like Hulu. I subscribe to a lot of shows within Hulu and they post to my queue the morning after they air. So, all I need to do is log in, go to my queue, and click “Play”. Boom.
If you’re looking to watch live sports, start getting to know TVAnts and StreamTorrent. Plus, this method ensures that you get out-of-market games, too.
You hardcore gamers looking to play graphics-intensive games will probably want a powerful desktop, but laptops can handle quite a bit too. Plus, if you’re a casual gamer (like myself), you are just looking for simple games to pass the time, in which case, there are plenty of great gaming sites out there like this one.
Miss college? Want to learn a new skill? There are lots of great places online to see and hear lectures and lessons taught by fine professors from all over the country. Looking for something a little more fun? Learn guitar (see link above) or build something cool at Instructables. There are endless possibilities for what you can learn through your laptop.
When I go to my grandmother’s house, looking through pictures involves emptying a cabinet full of old albums and sitting at the kitchen table while everyone crowds around them and tries to see what’s going on. Nowadays, all those pictures (and more!) can be stored on your laptop. Back them up to a site like Picasa (my favorite) and tag, organize, and share them with everyone forever.
Bonus tip: set your screensaver to pull pictures from the folder on your computer where you keep all your photos, and your monitor becomes an instant digital photo frame when not in use.
Talk radio, comedy stations, music of all types and genres – internet radio is fantastic. Set up a Pandora station for customized listening goodness, or listen to hundreds of live radio stations on iheartradio.com. Take it with you.
The local version of the previous tip. Imagine: no CD towers to buy, no cases to spend half an hour opening. Download music from iTunes or Zune Marketplace or Amazon. Store them on your computer (and back them up, of course). Rip your current CD collection and then pack away those discs in a bin somewhere. You can listen to any music at any time, anywhere. It’s a beautiful thing.
It doesn’t matter if you are biking, running, or driving a car – sometimes you just need directions. Now, you can type in any location or address into sites like Google Maps or MapQuest and you know exactly how to get anywhere. You no longer have a need for a big paper map that takes up half the front of the car. Just search, print, and move on.
If you want a laugh, look at my notes from high school and college: they’re messy and smudged (I’m a lefty), completely disorganized, and a total failure. Today, with services like Evernote, you can organize and tag your notes, and they won’t be smudged or unreadable. Heck, you can even just use a word processor to get the job done if you want. Just pull your laptop out of its bag and get to typing.
Remember how embarrassing it was to go to a bookstore or a library and pick up one of those stupid “For Dummies” books? Now, you don’t need them. I’m amazed they’re still on the shelves at all. There is no longer an excuse for not knowing something. You can Google it, you can Bing it, you can even Ask Jeeves if you want. Get your plumbing/cooking/health questions answered just by typing your question into a search engine. For facts (mostly accurate), hit up Wikipedia.
I use Google Calendar, but you can use whatever you want. All the things going on in your life can be chronicled, and you can have reminders sent to you straight from your calendar. Stop missing those anniversaries/birthdays/whatever.
My mom kept an address book for years. When I needed a phone number, I needed to go to the closet, pull it out, flip to the section with the first letter of their last name, navigate through old, crossed-out addresses and skim through until I found what I was looking for. Now? I just sit at my laptop, open up Google Contacts, and use the search box to find the entry with the person I’m looking for. You can use Outlook or something else if you want. But have a backup of all your contacts, and you can search them easily at any time.
Hop on Weather.com and enter in your zip code at the top of the page – severe weather warnings, detailed forecasts of the next couple of days, and extended 10-day forecasts all come up. You can watch the live radar if you want. Do this stuff for monitoring the weather of your next vacation destination. Turn off the Weather Channel and put down the newspaper.
Ever notice how you don’t see presentations done with big poster boards anymore? That’s because you just need to load that PowerPoint presentation and plug your laptop into a projector. It looks slicker, makes you look good, and was easy to do with your laptop.
Wave “bye-bye” to adding and subtracting errors. A complete money management system can be had on any laptop. Need to share it with your husband/wife? Use a free online service like ClearCheckbook or share a Google Doc. The math and tracking is done for you – all you need to do is enter in those transactions.
VoIP technology continues to advance. I run a Skype phone line with a little headset for business. Want to video chat with somebody like you see in the movies? Get a cheap little webcam and you can all you want. I used to video chat weekly with my then-girlfriend while she was in Taiwan. You can now talk to somebody and see them, regardless of where they are. Powerful stuff.
High school reunions are becoming obsolete with sites like Facebook. We all know what we are doing, all the time. That’s lame sometimes, but it comes in handy. For example, I have friends all over the country, and I can stay a part of their lives through my communications on Facebook. When done correctly, Facebook can enhance your personal relationships, and you can share joys, sorrows, and laughs with people every day.
Here’s where the fun starts! Do you miss the Super Nintendo? How about classic Nintendo? Sega Genesis? Hop over to your favorite search engine and type in “SNES emulators” to find a program that will play old Super Nintendo games. Download it, then search for “SNES roms” to find and download the games. Plug in a USB controller and you’ll feel like you’re 8 years old all over again!
Whether you do it in an RSS feed reader or you just visit a site like CNN or MSN, the headlines are always updating and keep you in the loop at all times. Hit up ESPN for live scores of all of your games. Then, cancel your newspaper subscription. I mean, like, NOW.
When I cook, I just put the laptop on the kitchen counter. I don’t need a shelf of cookbooks (although I do still have a few). You can store recipes in Evernote or use a service like Supercook to manage your inventory of recipes. It makes your cooking life a lot easier, and you never have to remember which recipe book that breaded chicken recipe was in.
DailyMile lets you map and save your runs. DailyBurn allows you the ability to track any type of workout, and even track your nutrition levels. You don’t need to keep a paper notebook or print out a spreadsheet. Type it in, submit it, and move on with your life. Slick, slick, slick.
Build a website, run a blog, connect on Facebook/Twitter, design brochures, write copy… the list goes on. Take notes during your meetings with clients. A laptop computer offers the flexibility to work anywhere you choose, provided your business can pay those bills. A laptop, in my opinion, is an absolutely essential tool for business-building today.
I remember back in 2000 when I first learned how to burn a CD. It took forever. Now, I use CDBurnerXP, but you can use just about anything. Put those home movies on a DVD. Make that mix CD for your friend (or that girl you like). It only takes a couple of minutes, and you can do it right from your laptop.
XBox Media Center, now on the original XBox, PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. All your movies and music on any TV in your house, from your computer.
Again, another invention that I am shocked is still on shelves: the portable DVD player. Instead, play this stuff on your laptop when sitting on the plane or when you’re supposed to be paying attention in class. Chances are, your laptop can handle any kind of DVD, too.
Google Tasks or Remember The Milk, or about a dozen others. Ditch the paper to-do list and type it up in your laptop. Want to keep it simpler? Open up a little Notepad document and bang out your list.
I’ve always been a big fan of WebMD, but there are other ways to get medical questions answered, too. This is not a substitute for a doctor’s visit, of course, but it can help you diagnose minor situations instead of paying that co-pay to be told those lumps on your throat are just leftover food scraps. [Note: this is not a good tip for hypochondriacs.]
Want to buy anything? Put your shoes down. Stay in your pajamas. Open up your laptop and get to Amazon. Search for whatever you want, and they’ll have it. Oh, and it’ll be cheaper, too.
Okay, so some of these are obvious, but it helps to have them here. Your laptop is a remarkably strong piece of technology. I would think twice before you ditch it to use some fancy-looking thing that only does two or three things on this list.
What do you use your laptop for?
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Tweet Humor: 10 Twitter Users That Crack Us Up [Mashable]
Twitter can be a very educational place, whereby following the right individual or brand, you can learn from their tweets. In fact, we’ve already highlighted usability experts, entrepreneurs, authors (fiction and nonfiction), environmentalists, foodies, and musicians that we think are must follows. But Twitter can also be a medium ripe with humor and capable of making the masses laugh with a single tweet that resonates throughout the Twittersphere. So now it’s time to a take a more comedic turn, and point out 10 LOL-inducing Twitter accounts that break the monotony of our work days, add spice to our weekends, and make Twitter a more entertaining place to be with their colorful characters.
Twitter can be a very educational place, whereby following the right individual or brand, you can learn from their tweets. In fact, we’ve already highlighted usability experts, entrepreneurs, authors (fiction and nonfiction), environmentalists, foodies, and musicians that we think are must follows.
But Twitter can also be a medium ripe with humor and capable of making the masses laugh with a single tweet that resonates throughout the Twittersphere. So now it’s time to a take a more comedic turn, and point out 10 LOL-inducing Twitter accounts that break the monotony of our work days, add spice to our weekends, and make Twitter a more entertaining place to be with their colorful characters.
Do You Make These 5 Common Mistakes When Switching To A More Positive Attitude? [The Positivity Blog]
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice” Wayne Dyer “For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else” Winston Churchill If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that positivity is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more positive attitude and there are some pitfalls. So today I’d like to share a few mistakes that I have made in this area and that I think are fairly common.
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice” Wayne Dyer
“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else” Winston Churchill
If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that positivity is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more positive attitude and there are some pitfalls. So today I’d like to share a few mistakes that I have made in this area and that I think are fairly common.
14 Ways a Notebook In Your Pocket Can Save You Money [The Simple Dollar]
Melinda writes in: “You constantly write about how having a notebook in your pocket all the time helps you in life and saves you money. I get that you can write down your ideas in it all the time, but I’m not a creative type. I don’t see how having a notebook on me at all times can save me money at all.” Aside from the fact that I’m able to use the notebook to write down my ideas – my career’s bread and butter – a pocket notebook constantly comes in handy for many other financial reasons as well. (FYI, I usually just keep a simple small Mead reporter’s notebook in my pocket, along with a good pen that doesn’t run out of ink.) Here are fourteen ways I use that notebook to directly save money.
Melinda writes in:
“You constantly write about how having a notebook in your pocket all the time helps you in life and saves you money. I get that you can write down your ideas in it all the time, but I’m not a creative type. I don’t see how having a notebook on me at all times can save me money at all.”
Aside from the fact that I’m able to use the notebook to write down my ideas – my career’s bread and butter – a pocket notebook constantly comes in handy for many other financial reasons as well. (FYI, I usually just keep a simple small Mead reporter’s notebook in my pocket, along with a good pen that doesn’t run out of ink.) Here are fourteen ways I use that notebook to directly save money.
Glue Suggests Movies, Music, and More [Lifehacker]
Once you sign up for a Glue Account, you can begin flagging things you like to build a profile of tastes. What kind of things? Glue can suggest books, music, movies, video games, wine, artists, and movie stars. You can log in using Facebook or Twitter and Glue will not only suggest items based on your own tastes but on the tastes of your friends.
Everybody needs a little therapy sometimes. What’s that? Don’t want to pay a guy $500 an hour to lay on his couch while he doodles in a notebook? Well, you’re in luck, because there’s a better way to give yourself a little therapy without having to hire a psychiatrist. It’s called writing. Now, I know you probably hate writing. That stems from school, when teachers forced you to write x number of words/pages on a certain topic. That’s not what we’re talking about here. This is free, honest writing about whatever you want. Here are a few benefits to keeping a blog or journal for yourself:
You don’t have to be some deep, introspective person to do it. It’s important for everybody to take a step back and look at themselves a little bit each day. There are plenty of different methods for doing this:
A blog is a great way to do it, as it is clean and accessible anywhere. Pair up a free Wordpress account with a cool template and an easy-to-use writing program like Windows Live Writer. Then you just have to open a new blog and start typing away! Want to go even simpler? Posterous will let you blog even easier, by using email as its main form of writing. You send your email to post@posterous.com and it will format it and post it for you. Attach a photo or video and it will embed it right into the post for you. Downside: other people will be able to read it. So if you don’t care – you come from the days of LiveJournal – then go ahead. It’s a great, flexible way to do it.
The traditional approach: this allows you to go anywhere with your thoughts. We all know how to write, and you can doodle in the margins, too. The big downside here is its vulnerability to the elements. Get caught in a rainstorm, and you might lose all your thoughts.
It’s something you probably already know how to do: open a document, label it whatever you want, and keep it in a designated folder. Type it and format it however you want, because it’s already something you’re familiar with. Downside: it might feel like you’re doing homework.
There’s something intriguing about the idea of using Evernote as a journaling platform. First, it’s private, and accessible anywhere for you, including your mobile phone. Second, you can record your thoughts via photograph, links to other web sites, simple typing, or even voice notes. There are infinite ways to use it, and it’s also free. I’ve long touted the advantages of using Evernote, and this one just makes sense. It’s great for journaling on-the-go, too: the mobile app allows you to create new voice notes, text notes, and snap and store pictures to sync up with the rest of your notebook. Pretty crazy stuff!
There are a lot of creative ways to keep some type of journal. Give it a try for a couple weeks and see what happens. Do you have a favorite way to keep a journal, or are you considering it? Share with us in the comments!
As Google Reader items come in, I put a star next to the ones I want to share with you readers. Lately, however, that section has been full of some great tips and articles, and I’m starting to get behind. So, let’s dump them all into one post for you to enjoy. Check these out:
If you enjoy using Evernote to store and organize all your information as much as I do, this is a great tip to quickly and easily file something away as quickly as creating a shortcut.
I considered writing an article like this, but it sure looks like Lifehacker beat me to the punch. While going paperless is great for the environment, my favorite benefit is that you can manage your information easier, and keep a cleaner desk to boot. Scanning things to PDF and filing them away are great ideas, and they also include places you can go to opt-out of junk mail. My new favorite tip?:
Digitize Your Signature and Email Instead of Fax The biggest source of paper in my work life is contracts and client agreements that need to be signed and returned. While people generally say "sign this and fax it back to us," you can do it without getting paper involved. First, create a digital version of your signature with a transparent background. Then, get the documents via email, and email (or eFax) them back with your signature added to them. (While there are lots of different kinds of electronic and digital signatures, this type will work for common consumer scenarios. It won’t work if you need something notarized or to appear with an original signature.)
The biggest source of paper in my work life is contracts and client agreements that need to be signed and returned. While people generally say "sign this and fax it back to us," you can do it without getting paper involved. First, create a digital version of your signature with a transparent background. Then, get the documents via email, and email (or eFax) them back with your signature added to them. (While there are lots of different kinds of electronic and digital signatures, this type will work for common consumer scenarios. It won’t work if you need something notarized or to appear with an original signature.)
I’m trying that next!
Jonathan Mead is a great contact I’ve made recently (I’ll be reviewing one of his ebooks shortly), and this post is a great warning to people trying to do things with their lives. They are probably not the two words you’re thinking of, either.
Yeah, it’s a marketing blog, but Seth Godin’s advice here blows through just about any topic you can think of. Check it out, and learn the fine art of shaving bears.
Recently pulled an all-nighter? Been there. After you do that, it screws up your sleep cycle for weeks while you try to get back on a normal schedule. In the meantime, you spend the day groggy, cranky, and generally unpleasant. Wise Bread shows you how to knock yourself back on track in a matter of one day.
If you make a habit of touring various productivity blogs on our fair Internet, you know who David Allen is. Allen wrote Getting Things Done, a guide to increasing your productivity and organizing your life. While I prefer to adapt principles from various productivity systems and integrate it all into something personally for me, I am a firm believer in Allen’s main principle behind GTD: empty your head.
Do you ever find yourself laying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering when you were going to fall asleep? Are you thinking to yourself, I was just exhausted half an hour ago – why am I wide awake now? Most people will tell you to get up and watch television or read a book until you are tired again. They’re right, but why not prevent the situation from happening altogether? I used to habitually lay in the dark at night while my mind raced. Fortunately, I’ve been able to put together a “system” of my own for emptying my head throughout the day and allowing me to kick back and relax when I need it most.
The main benefit to all of this is that you stop pressuring your brain. We’re all imperfect, and we all forget stuff. That’s why you might be sitting up at night thinking about something important. Your brain is afraid that you will forget it. By getting these things out of your head, you give your brain a break (regardless of how big of a jerk it can be to you). So, here are a few ways you can help yourself relax:
Yeah, yeah. This is not a revolutionary concept. But there is a catch: put the most mundane things on it. If there is something in your life with a date attached, put it on your calendar. And better yet, use Google Calendar. Using Google Calendar allows you to set up multiple calendars and the service can send you emails or even text messages to remind you of upcoming events, if you wish. My Google calendar contains the following (all separate calendars):
That’s a lot, but they all overlay into one neat and tidy calendar that I can glance at to see all the upcoming events and information that I need. If you want to use a desktop calendar, go for it. Love your Microsoft Outlook? I don’t quite understand you, but knock yourself out! The point is: having things written out somewhere will relieve your brain of trying to remember what’s happening next.
To the right, you will see my current to-do list, courtesy of Gmail Tasks. It’s nothing fancy – it’s a list of things that need to be done, with a checkbox to mark them off as I complete them. Easy as pie.
Every night, think about the next day’s events. As you think of them, create a new item in your to-do list. It automatically makes your day more organized. You can also arrange them in order of execution – which I do – and it makes your day that much more reasonable. A to-do list allows you to focus on doing one thing at a time, and doing it well. This removes the stress of How am I going to get this done?!? from your life.
There are a variety of different ways you can keep to-do lists. If you are already a Gmail user, just go to “Settings” and the “Labs” tab. Enable Tasks in Gmail, and you’re all set. You can manage your tasks on the road, too, if you have an internet-enabled smartphone. Even if you don’t, you can use a service like Txtful, where you can send your tasks to Gmail through text messages. Many GTD fanatics swear by Remember The Milk, which is another task list creator (also available via Txtful). A good whiteboard is an easy way to do this. Or you can go all old-school on us with a notepad and pen. Whatever way works for you!
I keep two notepads: one next to my desk, and one on my nightstand. For the one next to my desk, I use it whenever I need to quickly jot down something (a phone number or a quick note), or even to brainstorm something quickly. While I love Evernote for my note-taking, I use a notepad for quick, disposable notes. The one next to my bed is for the occasional night when I still am not sleeping well. In fact, I get many blog post ideas laying in bed at night. If that happens, I flip on my bedlight, grab the notepad, and take a few notes. That way, my brain doesn’t try to keep writing it while I’m trying to fall asleep.
That’s how the idea for this post came about, actually.
“Aren’t journals and diaries for teenage girls?”
Sure, but they can be incredibly useful for adults. Our stresses don’t just come from practical problems – we have our emotional needs too! And bottling up our feelings only puts more on our shoulders. Commit some time every day to write a few feelings down. Your notes can be as long and intense as you want. Put down a few lines if you want, or cover eight pages. Just get something down. It’s incredibly therapeutic, and it’s great for your emotional health.
Do it with a nice little journal, or use any of the five best journaling tools as determined by Lifehacker readers.
As you can tell here, the point is to set yourself up with a system that YOU are comfortable with. You want it to be a pleasant experience, and a system that you are going to actually use. Doubt me? Give it a try for a week – you might be surprised at how much better you can handle your stresses.
Do you have your own secret tips or tricks for keeping your brain stress-free? Share them in the comments!
