The Digital Bedouins and the Backpack Office 149
PetManimal writes "The laptop and wireless revolutions have led to the rise of a new class of digital 'Bedouins' — tech workers who ply their crafts from Starbucks and other locations with WiFi access. Another article describes some strategies and tools for embracing the Bedouin way of life, and even having fun: 'If you have the right kind of job, you can take vacations while you're on the clock. In other words, you can travel for fun and adventure and keep on working. You can travel a lot more without needing more official vacation time. I've done it. In August I took a month long vacation to Central America, backpacking from one Mayan ruin to the next, and I never officially took time off. I submitted my columns, provided reports and other input, participated in conference calls and interacted via e-mail. I used hotel Wi-Fi connections and local cybercafes to communicate and Skype to make business calls. Nobody knew I was sunburned, drinking from a coconut and listening to howler monkeys as I replied to their e-mails.'"
When it works, it works :) (and a few tips) (Score:2, Informative)
However, there are a few things which make it easier that I recommend:
- An outlet splitter. When someone else has dibs on ("sovereignty over") the only electric outlet in a particular place, and your battery life is draining-draining-draining, you may luck out and find that he (or she) is reasonable, sharing-oriented, etc. Or, he (or she) may just be a greedy, sanctimonious ass. If you have an outlet splitter (one plug leading to two female plugs on short leashes), (a) it's hard to turn down your request to share the outlet, (b) it may gain you that cruicial 12 extra inches so's you can actually work on a flat surface and (c) it may let you plug in another device which needs a wallwart -- some of those are very finicky for reasons related to gravity, and it's nice not to block out others with your AC-to-DC bricklet. Just slightly larger, a small powerstrip does the same thing.
- A WiFi detector, if you need WiFi and work from a laptop. There are a few choices out there (I reviewed the Canary version a while back) that will show lots more than that there might be a network around -- ESSID, strength, encryption, etc. Using one of these may save you a lot of battery juice. If you already carry a pocket PC with WiFi built in, this is probably redundant.
- A USB key, kept on your person. Even moreso than in an office or at home, galavanting about with a laptop in vacationland may attract attention of the wrong sort. I've never had a laptop stolen, but sometimes that's been despite my idiocy in preferring to leave it on the table running rather than pack everything into a bag to wait in line for another cup of coffee. Alternatively, the more travel you do, the more opportunities you have to drop your laptop. USB keys are now capacious enough and cheap enough for nearly anyone whose work is mostly *text* oriented to save their important documents frequently, so if the worst happens, you haven't lost all your data. There have been a few Ask Slashdots about the most important apps and data to keep on a USB key, which are worth poring through. You could have a complete Linux distro on there, with quite a bit of room left for documents, too. The other day I saw at Target (in Pennsylvania, USA) 512MB Dane Electric USB drives for $9.99.
- A live Linux distro on CD, if not on USB key or similar. If a hard drive goes south, but you have another otherwise functional laptop, having along a Linux distro can be very handy.
- The idea of laptop-commuting from a tropical isle sounds more idyllic than it necessarily is; one of the big problems of working from "anywhere" is that you don't always get to choose the angle of the sun. For a while I used (though haven't needed and may have now lost it) an item of commercial manufacture which folded down like a diagonally disected cardboard box, made of a plasticy-cardboardy stuff, and which attached with velcro to a laptop to provide a glare blocking semi-enclosure. It folded down to the size of a thickish magazine, weighed just a few ounces. I'm sure you could improvise such a thing out of duct tape, chopsticks, and construction paper
timothy
Re:About working from Malaysia... (Score:3, Informative)
Visa: No visa required to spend 4 months a year here. Actually you can spend 5 months at a time (three automatically on entry, then a 2-month extension). But the clock resets every time you leave and come back in.
Apartment: Just found something in the newspaper. I spent about a week looking when I first arrived, but it seems to be a renter's market. My landlord says they're really overbuilding.
Bank account: Haven't bothered. ATM and credit cards from elsewhere work, and there's online banking. With a spouse visa you should have no trouble setting up a bank account. Or your wife could.
Medical insurance: I kept my insurance from home in case of emergency, but haven't used it. Doctor's visit plus prescription usually runs me about US$15. Dental - I got a crown, the full cash price was less than my deductible would have been back when I was living in the US.
Car: I don't like driving. Here in the centre of town there's little need. I can walk to most of the places I need to go. I never have to wait more than 5 minutes for a taxi and the most expensive taxi ride I've ever had, other than to the airport, was less than US$5 (most are less than $1).
Language: A considerable number of people are completely fluent in English; everyone speaks some. It's obviously a self-selected group, but the vast majority of my friends here speak it as their preferred language. Some examples about the ubiquity of English: My lease is in English; when you go to the phone company web site to read about DSL [tm.net.my], the information is only available in English, not Malay; there are four major English-language daily newspapers in Kuala Lumpur; foreign movies are shown in their original English (sometimes with Malay subtitles) in the cinema; the Yellow Pages is in English; and so on.
I took Malay classes for 6 weeks and enjoyed it, but I haven't had much chance to use the language except for ordering in restaurants and basic polite formalities. Now I'm planning to study Mandarin instead.