At the office not long ago, we received the visit from a colleague form the States. That means he was a Physics PhD. During the lunch break he took out of his bag his mac book Air and as we were all staring at it and while he was telling to us all about how he got his laptop at work “Because he was more productive that way” he let us play with the gadget for a while.

This has to do with how much can we understand new realities. Productivity facts, and those things.Being productive takes place at the office only occasionally. The idea is to get the most of people in every moment. And being an Entrepreneur and all, best case scenario you end up being at the office too short too little.

I found on This on Digg recently and found the time to read it. It explains a little bit about uhow the world is changing the place and time of work also. The most common thing nowadays is to have two laptops. A big heavy powerful tool at the desk, and a mini laptop for the go.

Of course you can blame it on the UMPCs, and on miniaturization etc. But truth to be told, this micro machines make almost all the work you might need on the street, and they are comfortable to carry as well as light. The Asus EEE has revolutionized the market portability wise. The fact that our main machine is now also a laptop is related to the fact that portability and mobility invades also the office and home space, letting us go from the living room to the kitchen. In the mean time, desktop computers begin their obscure pathway through hardcore resources consumers or gamers.

So, maybe instead of buying a new laptop you could add a UMPC to your lines….

What would you buy for a printer these days?

Let’s just say you won’t buy that dot matrix printer for sale on ebay. If you think anything is as good as anything else, well, you’d be wrong.

First off, you really don’t want to save some bucks with printing cheats. I mean, if you don’t want to throw your money away there are plenty of ways, your printing should not be it. Mock me not on this, cheap cartridges are not a way of saving money.

Office printing should be a quality product of yours, no matter what your printing, it sell a good amount of your corporate image, so don’t go cheap on this.

Try to focus on being effective and efficient. Think about the following: Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote these these a while ago and today they came to my mind again.

So, Ups! A lot of time passed since my last post and today I came across this post and It got me thinking again about paper and its place in our life.

The question of whether or not paper can go away returned as it did back then.

My Opinion is that it is really impractical. in fact, I try to have as little paper on me as possible (money included, hehe). But the time comes when the asiest way to “write” something down is easiest when on paper… So

These are some ways to try to leave paper behind, in my opinion, and why I think that way

• HP tablet. It is really comfortable, and practical too. You can take notes and make sketches just as if you were on a notebook. Plug is a must
• The old and beloved palm. (TX is the best choice I think)
• The incredible MacBook Air. I held it on my hand a couple of days ago. It is as light as a feather. You could easily think it was a notebook

Anyone who went trough a bad day knows that those days are usually the ones when our cellphone battery decides to  go dead on us.

Since most of our life nowadays depend on the battery indicator, and since most of us spend a lot of time moving around in the car, I think a charger is one of the must have items on your car

There are not many things to look for here, but I would focus at least on these to stat with.

1. Small: Just because, and for obvious reasons
2. Light: you want to know when it is charging and when it has finished
3. Try ir to be car friendly i.e. try to buy something you can integrate to the car

So, there is not something to recommend here, mainly because you’re going to want to search for something somewhat specific, but a good place to start is a Try on Amazon

In recent past time I’ve come to work with several lawyers, some of which were freelancers. I’ve noticed some trend in the way the work. This is what I saw.

1. Almost none of them have a personal website. However, all of them have several email accounts.
2. They move a lot. Inside the city mostly, but also on the road.
3. They never get too all-terrain.Their environment is always somewhat safe.
4. They need to get every call.

So what I think they need is:

1. Good reception, it has to be the best there is
2. Car integration, bluetooth almost mandatory
3. Medium size. Bulky is never good.

So in this case I’m going to recommend the Moto Krzr K1 that you can get from $175

But, and this is a big but, if you want to do things right, you need a push mail system, to get your emails right away, In this case you’ll want to go in the blackberry direction and the Pearl’s form factor is your best choice there. You’ll be spending a little bit more for the phone and a lot more for the service, but trust me it is the way to go.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you need X and X is not around?

Well, it hapens to me all the time and I always get the feeling that there shoud be a pen or something with a shape factor that is resistant to everything and it is not necessarily a VictorInox Swiss Army Knife.

So I went and tried to find something like that and this is what I came up with.

But what I think a multi pen should have is

1. Laser pointer
2. Usb pen drive
3. Bluetooth or radio presentation controler
4. Roller ball
5. voice recorder

And I’ll stop just because I think it is going out of hand (price wise). I’ll settle for 3 of the above

We’ll start  another post series today.

Your car is your life.

The point being that for most entrepreneurs it really is. You’re constantly going somewhere, keeping stuff there, etc., etc.,… You know.

The cellphone is pretty likely to ring while we are on the road and it is not nice (or legal) to pick it up and answer it. You need a freehands device and I will recommend one today.

I’ll say, at least for what I know, your best option is the BlueAnt Supertooth.  And this is why:

1. It is a bluetooth but a speakerphone, (I really hate  the ones that go in your ear)
2. It is not an install required gadget. You get off the car and you take with you. Take it into the (real) office
3. Easy to take calls (really)
4. if there is someone else that uses the car, or maybe you have two phones on you all the time, this gadgets supports multi-pairing, so both phones can pick calls with the same device.
5. excellent battery life.
6. you can get it for $99

Many people out there  recommend (and explain why) to buy a mac with a conviction that resembles that of the most radicalised blood-signed-contract fanatics. Me for example

Macs are, beyond discussion, a bit more expensive machines, really difficult to tune up in hardware that usually ship more in capability than more of 90% of the consumers use.

The list of good reasons to buy a mac is also long and it is everywhere. However, if you are an entrepreneur, I think you should at least fulfill 3 of these 5 reasons to buy a mac.

1. You are relatively new to computers: Most people won’t try a new system just because it is new. They have to learn all, all over again. So, maybe, bad learned, why bother
2. you don’t like dealing with trouble: beyond the cruel truth (Macs being just  7% of US market) Macs almost never give you any trouble, and there is only one known virus over the las 5 years)
3. Image matters. If so, your only option is Mac.
4. Safe buy: In normal work conditions, a Mac will not grow old (that means it won’t become outdated) before 3 years passed. You’ll find it does all you want afterwords too.
5. If you are in a startup stage, presentations and all, the Mac is a great choice. It is great for presentations, it looks great, you have a remote, great projector compatibility. This reason alone could justify the mac purchase.

Maybe this entry is already old before I post it, but reality shows me every day it maybe not,  since there are a lot of offices out there that still have monitors on their desks that could have easily be built all the way back in 1980.

And it is really bad PR. CRT’s look really bad, not only because it sells an image of indifference towards technology, they are difficult as hell to clean and they use an enormous amount of space on the desk.

I don’t want even to get started with those places where image is the thing to have in mind, like the receptionist’s desk or the free Internet computers at the hotel’s lobby.

If your computers are going to be there to the public, customers or clients to see, you should be thinking about changing your monitor fleet to LCD. Mainly because they are so much prettier, but also the consume less energy and (of course) cover less space. They are so much easier on the eyes and I promise none of the myths surrounding the flat panel displays are going to become true.

I recommend the Samsung LCD systems, mainly because they always make me happy enough, contrast and speed ratios are acceptable in all the product line. Oh! and in my opinion they price tag is also right.

But if image is your thing, then you could look at the high end devices, there are some really tasty!

In fact it is a pity. For many reasons. But it is a fact that palm is going backwards and it has gone backwards.  for some time now.
Palm has not released an original product for too long now. Their last promising concept, the foleo, was killed, their last smartphone, the centro is not doing half as well of what they expected and is the last standing knight in a battle that is no longer fought in the cavalry fields.
So, let me give you some advice:

1. Don’t buy a palm device unless it’s perfectly clear to you what is it that you’re gonna do with it.
2. If you’re going the palm way, let it at least be smartphone.
3. If you own a palm and you use it as your personal organizer, start thinking about selling it on ebay, the prices are going down really fast.