Renting a wireless card for a week

 

 

 

 

 

Out of town for a week in Puerto Rico with no internet access, I decided to rent a wireless card before I left. I googled “rent wireless card” a company called Rovair popped up in the paid ads.

(The overarching philosophical question is why could I not go on vacation with “just” my Iphone and why does one really need internet access 365 days per year, but being self-employed I thought it wise to be connected. And of course the kids have to check FB daily at least.)

It was easy to sign up on the site. The card was about $9 per day and it arrived by federal express well before I needed it.  It was a USB card from Verizon. Installation was easy and took about 5 minutes. I would say that the signal strength out of town was about 60% that of a dsl line. Usable, but slow.

When I was done, I fed-x’ed the card back to Rovair and that was it.The company was easy to deal with and everything worked perfectly. This is a good solution when you need short term internet access.

Dropbox and Filecenter

Dropbox and Filecenter work beautifully together.

Filecenter is file-organizing software that frees you from the tyranny of the typical windows file tree. It opens automatically whenever you save a file, has an intuitive look and makes it snap to add folders and files to the right places without sifting and clicking through 10 different folders and subfolders. It costs $79. I’ve used it for years without any problems. I don’t use it for scanning, although you could. I scan documents directly into Adobe Acrobat and then save them using Filecenter to the location that I want. The only problem is that the files are sitting on my work computer and can’t be accessed without using Gotomypc or something.

Enter Dropbox. It’s an online backup and file syncing software. Any files that you add to the “MyDropbox” folder in “My Document” are automatically backed up to Amazon web services and are synched with any other computers that are running Dropbox. So, you are able to access your files from any of your computers running Dropbox or from any computer connected to the internet because you can log onto the Dropbox website and see all of your files. (Bonus sidecar: Dropbox is free for the first 2 GB of storage and charges are reasonable thereafter.) I use Dropbox for my active work files (thus staying in the free category), but I use Jungledisk to back up the whole mess, including all archived files. Finally, Dropbox can be accessed easily from an I-Phone, so you can get your files no matter where you travel.

Once Dropbox is installed, you simply set up Filecenter to access the Folders that you create in Dropbox. Under the “My Dropbox” folder, you can create as many sub-folders as you want like “Wills Forms,” Trust Forms” or “My Recent Arrests.” Filecenter simply streamlines the process of saving the many files we open and close and move each day. And Dropbox gives you a complete copy of all files on your computers, backs up those files instantly to Amazon “in the cloud” and lets you access them from any internet connection. Good combination.

Most-used utility program

Snagit is my most-used utility program. It’s expensive at $49, but worth it.

Choosing a blog platform

I really like handwritten yes/no type flowcharts.

This one shows how to pick a  blog platform.

Mind Manager supports Mac now

One of my favorite programs, the very useful and easy-to-use Mind Manager program from Mindjet recently released a Mac version of the program.

Scan Away

For the last five years I used a Canon flatbed scanner that was slow, but reliable. I read some reviews online and decided to upgrade to a faster sheet fed scanner. I narrowed it down to the Fujitsu Snapscan and the Visioneer 450

I picked the Visioneer for about $600 and bought it on amazon.com. It scans directly into PDF format which is essential for me because I use PDF to store documents and to send letters and other things faxed to me on to clients by email.

My only complaint (this may have more to do with my fax machine than the scanner): When I receive documents on my fax it curls them a little at the top. The scanner jammed alot at first when I tried to scan them in top first. The solution was to scan them bottom first, where they were flatter, and I haven’t had a jam up since.

This scanner is a must have. It saves a lot of time (scans 20 pages per minute) and helps us keep documents flowing out to clients and is an incredible aid in the never-ending attempt to stay organized.