Blogalicious Lesson #2: 5 Must Have Gadgets for Your Mobile Office

Have you ever watched the Golden Girls? Remember when Sophia would say, “Picture it, Sicily 1953.” Well I’m about to have a Sophia moment (lol). Picture it, 2003 a tech savvy New York sista (that’s me) absolutely loves buying the latest gadgets. If it was hot on the Circuit City shelves, I had to have it and I worked hard to get it. Now flash forward a few years later and I’m writing posts about how to breath new life into my old laptop. These days the only new gadgets I see are Leapster Learning Systems for my toddler.

I work from home, as you know, so most days my laptop, graphics programs, and external hard drive are pretty much all I need. While I was at Blogalicious 2010, I discovered 5 gadgets that every blogger and entrepreneur should have in their mobile office.

If you read my first lesson learned, I told you I spent all day Friday running around trying to catch a flight to the conference. That included frantic calls to the hotel, family, and hubby, which killed my cell phone battery. Every time I got to another airport I was scrambling to find an outlet to charge my phone AND then at the conference it was always that moment when I really wanted to take a picture or do video that my battery would die. As luck would have it, during my time as one of the volunteers for the Blogalicious Geek Lounge, I got to chat with Jessica, a representative from a company called iGo. They make portable battery chargers so you can charge your mobile device on the go AND they are environmentally friendly. I found myself saying, “I wish I had one of these when I missed my flight!” I’m going to get one (hopefully), test it out, and tell you about it in more detail later.

South Beach Miami is beautiful, but leave it to me to get lost on my way to meeting fellow mom bloggers for dinner. I’m scrambling trying to find the restaurant, D Rodriguez Cuba (the food was great), but my phone is just about to die when I decide to ask this lady for directions and she says, “Sorry I don’t know where that is, but doesn’t your phone have GPS?” Funny enough it does, but what good is GPS on a phone (the Motorola Backflip) that has HORRIBLE battery life. Long story short, when I finally get to dinner one of the ladies was using her iPad to find directions to our next destination. I noticed all throughout the event folks were tapping away at their iPads in search of information. Prior to the conference I had done some research and the iPad’s battery life is up to 10 hours on one single charge! WTF! My cell takes a nap after about two -three hours. Not to mention all the amazing things you can do with the iPad (more on that in another post).

So you know I love my HP Pavilion laptop right? But momma is getting old. Having to lug that bad boy on my back was no fun at all. I couldn’t help but look on enviously as fellow bloggers tapped away at their mini netbooks, so light weight and so very portable. While I do not do conferences a lot, I do travel a lot so getting a notebook that doesn’t feel like a baby on my back, is a must. There are a few great minis on the market right now and I’ll talk more about them in detail in another post.

Yesterday I talked about missing my flight to the conference and how that screwed up my whole day. I recommended that if you can check-in to your flight beforehand AND print out your tickets in advance you definitely should. The only reason I missed my flight, is because no one was there to print out my boarding pass. If I had a portable printer, well then that would have changed everything! This morning I discovered the Brother PocketJet Mobile printer and it was 15.2 ounces. I don’t know how well it works, but I’m going to start doing some more research on this as well.

I kinda knew that going to the conference meant having a good video camera, so I purchased the JVC PICSIO GC-FM1A HD Camcorder for my trip. It is HD quality video, light weight and half the price of the Flip. It doesn’t have a flash, so I figured I would use it in combination with the flash camera on my Motorola Backflip, which is about 8.0 mega pixels. That’s the good part, here comes the bad part. Have you ever been to an event? You want to take a picture with somebody just before they rush out, your are scrambling trying to find your camera. Well I spent a lot of time scrambling picking up the JVC when I wanted to backflip or vice versa.

The JVC is great in really well lit places, but horrible in the dark. Plus while I thought I would love having HD, it takes up so much memory! I kept having to change my memory cards, and I never had to do that with my Kodak Camera ( I don’t think I ever change that card, as a matter of fact). As for the Backflip, well that bad boy takes forever to turn on (not great when you are rushing) and it dies in a matter of 2 – 3 hours. Not to mention the fact that the image quality is good, not great. And the touch screen is not as responsive as it should be, so showing people how to take the picture for me, is an absolutely nightmare! I am still on the look out for the right camera for this mom blogger / mompreneur, so I will keep you posted. I have a few good shots of my trip, but needless to say I will be swiping pics from my blogging pals, because my gadget game was so not on point.

As always, I’m here to tell you to listen up and learn from my mistakes! In the upcoming months I will be diligently working on my mobile office. I will keep you updated with my progress, so review my most recent gadget and technology posts to see what new tips I have for you.

For all 30 Blogalicious lessons learned, read my series of Blogalicious 2010 Adventures.