For the last six weeks or so, maybe a little more, I’ve been making more time to get out of the office when it comes to planning on projects, dealing with client emails or any of the music and theatre related activities.
I’ll either pencil a morning in at home or I’ll take to a coffee shop in Kilkenny. During the recent Smitten run with The Devious Theatre Company I spent some time working from a corner of ‘The Barn’ (theatre venue), Crotty’s coffee shop on Kieran Street, The Field on High Street (great grub) and now the Kilkenny Cafe at Market Cross.
While the O2 broadband connection in my bag here beside me will allow me to work online from relatively anywhere in Kilkenny, the Kilkenny Cafe (as I mentioned in this video this morning) offer a ‘Meeting Room’ facility, having changed the upper level of the cafe to provide free wifi access (you don’t need a card or key) and powerpoints for your laptop / mobile phone.
So twice in two weeks I’ve found myself sitting here, breakfast on one side, laptop on the other, plenty of food for thought.
When you spend as long in the office as I tend to do, it does good get out of there every now and again and take the work with me.
Plus, the tea isn’t too bad either.
Note: The Asus EEE PC above isn’t mine, but I did have the joy of setting it up and getting to tinker around with it for a while. Works well in a wire-free environment.
I borrowed my nephew’s EeePC when travelling to Maynooth last week and found it an ideal companion for checking email, browsing and feed reading on the road. As soon as the Ubuntu version of Dell’s new Inspiron Mini is launched here I’m putting in my order (which my nephew will be delighted to know!)
I saw those Dell Minis recently on the Dell site, must say, they look impressive. The EEE PC above belongs to a local journalist who carries the laptop (minitop/babytop) in her handbag – the main intention being to process audio snippets on the fly to email back to base, something I could see a great use in.
The sheer size and portability is great. Didn’t get to check the webcam option on it though. For checking email, watching a few streaming videos, catching up with feeds, it would certainly make for a nice companion. Plus the pricing of it isn’t colossal.
I would imagine after a while that the 512mb ram might be an issue, knowing that XP can still be a bit of a beast at the best of times, especially if you move into any kind of multimedia authoring but for getting down to basics on the road it’s a good option to swing for.
Is there a planned release date for the Dell mini?
Good to hear such positive reviews of the EEEPC. We’re planning to take on on our circumnavigation of the world by bicycle. And will be using it to blog from some pretty out of the way places so its good to hear that it’s functioning well.
Good to hear such positive reviews of the EEEPC.
We’re planning to take on on our circumnavigation of the world by bicycle. And will be using it to blog from some pretty out of the way places so its good to hear that it’s functioning well.
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