Anymore, working on your computer and saving that work to the hard drive is becoming obsolete. So many of us have so many computers at our disposal that saving our work to one computer is just a hassle, because then you have to go back to that particular computer in order to continue working. There are several solutions to this problem.
First, there is the USB drive. We can save whatever we need to save to this tiny thing that plugs into any USB port and acts like the recently-forgotten floppy disk. It fits on your keychain, or your pocket, or pretty much wherever you need it to. And you can get them in varying sizes in order to meet your needs, from 2GB to 64GB, depending on how much you need to carry with you and how much you want to spend.
Then, we have the portable hard drive. These operate pretty much in the same was as the USB drive, only on a much larger scale, both in physical size and in storage space. With one of these, it’s possible to carry an entire computer’s worth of data around with you, though it’s probably not going to fit in your pocket. If you carry a purse, it’ll probably fit in there. Otherwise, you can buy a nifty little carrying case for it.
Laptops are also obviously a solution to this problem, since you don’t have to switch computers when you switch locations. You can keep your work always with you, complete with all of the programs you know and love and are used to running. Netbooks are a wonderful way to scale down this option, as long as you don’t need a lot of computing power at your fingertips. The more power you need, the heavier and less portable this option is going to be for you. Photoshop or its equivalent is probably not going to run on a 2 lb. netbook with a gig of ram.
Enter the cloud.
No longer are you limited by the storage space on your USB drive, or portable hard drive, or even your laptop or desktop computer. No longer do you have to sit in non-productive boredom because you forgot to bring your storage solution of choice with you. Unless you’re working somewhere that has no access to the internet, which in this day and age is highly unlikely, you have access to everything you need. Online storage solutions are a beautiful thing, though I don’t need to get into the implications for our alternating laziness and need to be constantly connected. I’ll save that for another post.
There are tons of ways on the internet now to store, sync, share, and access your files without needing to keep them on portable storage. Some of these even go the extra step of not requiring you to have any software, such as Microsoft Office, installed on your computer at all; you can work completely online.
My best, and favorite, example of this is Google Documents. I’m very fond of Google, for no other reason than you can do just about anything with them, for free. With Google Documents, you can store online all of the files you would work on in Microsoft Office, share them with other users, and work on them directly from your browser. No need to have Microsoft Office installed at all, which is nice since it’s not exactly a cheap office suite. Unfortunately, this solution has file size limitations, although they are adding the feature that you can store any kind of file you want (not just Office type files) so you can download it at a different location and work on it there.
Another great product, or website I should say, is ZumoDrive. This site is primarily for media storage, such as music and photos, but you can store anything you like up to your storage limit. 2GB is free, but anything over that is going to net you a monthly fee. The fun thing about this site is that after you’ve uploaded your media, you can then stream it to the device of your choice without having to download it. It’s also a good way to backup your photos in case something happens to your computer, since those are likely the least easily-replaced files on your machine. You only have to link the folders you want to include, and they’ll sync automatically as you add things to them. No need to remember to do periodic backups.
There are plenty more out there, with varying price tags, feature sets, and limitations. This is something that I suggest everyone take advantage of, especially with things like the iPad, which, although it’s brand new, only boasts 64GB (maximum) of on-board storage. Pretty soon, we won’t need computers at all, just a screen and a keyboard with an internet connection, and everything will be accessible from there. Better get ready.
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I’ve recently started using dropbox on my desktop and my phone. So far so good. I have a word processing, spreadsheet and power point app on my phone that connects to it directly so when I save a doc it is automatically synced to my computer. I have been using it to keep track of my time card for work.
I’m still waiting on the Office suite-type apps for my phone, though honestly I don’t use them much when I have them. I do have a word processing app that connects to Google Documents, which can be handy. There’s no Dropbox app for the Pre, so ZumoDrive is a better option for me. It also lets me stream music from the program to my phone that I’ve synced from my computer, which is kind of nice.