Adventures in home working

I have gradually refined my workstation design, and its changed quite a lot since the last time I posted.  So I thought I would provide an update.  This first image shows an overview of the whole environment, there are some key points to look out for:

• First I two PC’s shown at the bottom, the one on the left is my desktop, running Windows 2003 Server, with 2GB of memory and VM Ware Workstation and all of my other applications.  This PC drives the three monitors via two ATI graphics boards.

Behind the PC’s in a curtain that my wife made for me that hides one hell of tangle of cables!

On top of the centre monitor is a USB web cam.  On the CRT monitor is my headphone jack and volume control and my Secure ID token (dual factor authentication) for my company VPN connection.

The two monitors centre and left are 19” TFT’s that run at 1280*1024.  The one on the right is a 19” Flat CRT.   I tend to use the one of the left for email, reference materials, instant message discussions etc.  The one in the middle for writing, presentations and reading, and the one on the left for Trillian Pro (docked far right) and web searches, and web reference material I am gathering up as I work as a set of tabs in Maxthon.

Lets look at things in a bit more detail now:

Working from the left again,  right next to my keyboard is my HP TC1000 Tablet in slate mode ready for jotting down notes etc.  I syncs wirelessly in the background with my email and files and I can use it wireless anywhere in the house and garden,  further afield it has a GPRS connection.  When I don’t need it it slides under the shelf out of the way.

Then there is a wireless mouse,  that slides under the shelf as well.  You can see just above the mouses cubby hole is a small pad of paper, sometimes I still prefer to make notes on paper.

The on the right is one of two DECT (wireless) phones.  These phones pick up my landline calls and my mobile calls when my Treo in its cradle, because the reception is better on the wireless phones than on the Treo and they are easier to hold.  We also have phones through the house, so i don’t have to carry my Treo everywhere I go in the house just in case I get a call.

On the top of the shelf is my speaker phone.  Its on a long cord so I can drag it onto the main desk and then I can sit back in my comfy chair with my feet up making notes on my tablet when I am on conference calls.

Whenever I go out I suspend my Tablet and drop it in my backpack and grab my Treo and I am off.  My backpack has everything I need when I am out walking and has a swim kit just in case I am tempted to pop into the pool.  It’s really small and light, but is ultra comfy which is important to me as it minimises the load on shoulders which are often in pain.

On the other side of my keyboard you can see my Treo in its cradle.  As soon as it slots in the cradle it forwards calls to the house phone number,  and when I take it out of the house, it switches off call divert (unless I ask it not to).  Then in the tray under my desk shelf is my TO READ pile,  I still get a few magazines.  Another pad of paper sits between the paper tray and the shelf and above that with the green glowing light is the microphone for skype calls.

Finally their is another PC (2GB again), which is running GSX server and my lab environment. which is currently running, Windows SharePoint Services,  Red Hat Enterprise linux 3, Windows XP VPN connected to my company network, Windows NT 4 to remember what things used to be like and Red hat Linux 8.  VMWare is just so cool!

Way over to the right tucked away in the corner is my printer, copier, scanner.  Its a HP D125xi with a sheet feeder and two paper trays,  one with good quality and one with cheap paper.  My wife makes more use of it than I do as a printer,  but I scan almost everything into PaperPort Pro which converts everything to PDF files.

Anyway thats a pretty good high level introduction.  Follow the links above for more details.

Just recently I read a blog post (which I can no longer find) that cast doubt on the business case for portable computers.  The basic argument went like this:

• Portable users worked for 14% more hours
• Portable users produced 13% more work
• Therefore portable users were 1% less efficient

Assuming I remember this correctly it seems a pretty strange analysis, so here is my counter analysis.  First the case for portables and productivity:

• Portable users do more hours when they have a portable device because it allows them to work when they would otherwise be undertaking some leisure activity, depending on the portable device in questions, these times are most often, whilst waiting in airports, travelling by train, sitting in front of the TV etc.
• Portable users do more hours because its easier to “just spend an hour” working at the weekend, than it is to drive to work and do it there
• Portable users spend more time with access to time critical information sources, email, IM etc and so respond faster reducing lead-times, and improving decision making
• Portable users make better use of their time in the office, processing email, expenses and other low low importance high volume tasks tend to be done at home.  Higher value tasks requiring face to face collaboration, leadership and problem resolution tend to get done in the office
• The vast majority of portable users do not get paid for the extra hours they work
• Even if they did get paid the marginal cost of their hours, compared to the full cost of an additional employee for every three portable users, is very considerably less
• Most portable users are happy with the improved flexibility a portable device affords to balance their time in the office and their time at home

That’s not to say that portable users are always more productive, there are some cons:

• The constant intrusion of work into leisure time leaves less time for rest and probably contemplation and innovation (I am guessing about that)
• The constraints of the portable device format can reduce productivity.  For example when I am away from my home office I have a laptop or tablet and am a lot less effective than I am with my three screen desktop, cordless mouse, conference phone ….
• Working with distractions like TV, family etc can lead to mistakes or overly terse emails and the like

So in summary I think it’s only to be expected that portable device users work more hours, but that those hours are slightly less effective.  However the overall business case for portable usage is very strong.  I personally believe that in most working environments, except task working environments, provided the workspace is designed well, all users should be able to work flexibly within their work office and at home as well as whilst travelling.

In his podcast today on Tablet PCs James mentioned that studies have shown the creativity is reduced when typing with both hands (which use both sides of the brain) which explains why many people find that their creativity is increased when using ink as the input method to capture ideas.  In addition the freedom of expression enabled by ink also increases creativity.  I have also seen this, and noticed a similar effect when mainly using my mouse and minimal typing to create Mindmaps on my desktop.

Its interesting how this interesting observation links together posts from yesterday on thinking and on report writing here and here.

James, author of the jkOnTheRun weblog, covering all thing mobile, emailed me yesterday to let me know about his new podcast on all things Tablet.  I have recently been getting into podcasts and listen to them when I am out walking or swimming.  This time though I listened to James at 5* speed in Windows Media Player at home while I followed the products and sites he mentioned in my browser.  All in all the combination of the 5* speed and the excellent content made for a very useful 10–15 minutes.  Podcasting has definately got a future!

Check out the podcast, James covers a wide range of topics, including: 

• The under utilisation of speech recognition
• Inking strategies and the effect of inking on the creative process
• Alternative pen input applications including ritePen, OrangeGuava and a rumour of a Tablet enabled version of ActiveWords.

Here is a list of the main sites he mentioned, snipped from his blog.

Tablet PC Buzz- Spencer Goad, Rob Bushway
Tablet PC Talk- Chris de Herrera
What is New- Lora Heiny
Tablet PC Weblog- Marc Orchant
Tablet PC Questions- Layne Heiny (newsgroup)
Tablet PC Post- Lora & Layne; software info and downloads
The Student Tablet PC- Tracy Hooten & Trevor Claiborne
Tablet PC2- Linda Epstein
Incremental Blogger- Loren Heiny
Rob Bushway’s Blog
Bootstrapped- Iggy Kin
Tablet PC Place- Christopher James
Life on the Wicked Stage- Warner Crocker (apologies to Warner- he is a Theatre Director and not Stage Director)

Imagine my surprise when the day after writing this post on my frustrations with the existing medium for writing and delivering reports, I see a very similar post on the subject of writing books and insightful comment.  Although in this case the frustration is not so much with the paper medium (which has worked and continues to work pretty well) but with the fact that we have not exploited the electronic medium.  The following extract talks to the lost opportunity, without which Joe does not believe eBooks will really take off:

The biggest barrier I see is this recognition that an e-book needs to be developed with the delivery platform in mind. Wouldn’t it be great if you could introduce the concept of a hyperlink to a printed book so that someone could just touch a phrase they don’t understand and they’re magically taken to a definition of that phrase or the first place it appears in the book? Instead, you have to flip back to the index, look it up, and then jump to that page. Oh, and while you’re doing that, you need to keep a thumb on your original page so that you don’t lose your place. That capability obviously already exists in the electronic world, but it’s not something that’s generally built in to e-books. Plus, I believe you have to construct the material in more bite-size chunks in an e-book, allowing users to read just the essentials, then drill down further (with links) if they want.

Imagine how fast you could get through the last book you read if it was constructed this way. I’m not just trying to save time though — since we’re all different, this model would allow us to dip in and out to different levels on any given topic, depending on how far you want to go. What would enable you to do this? It would be possible because the author constructed the book this way. That’s not so easy in a printed book. It’s this sort of layering of the content that I believe needs to be taken into consideration to build a truly effective e-book.

If you read my blog then you know I am pretty passionate about office design in general and have a category devoted to related issues.  So I was interested to see dave’s ideas for creating an office for writing, where in particular he describes the benefits of consolidating all of his computing needs onto a single device.  Bryan responds that he is struggling to cope with 3 computers. 

I found both interesting perspectives, especially since I have quite a number of computers, and largely find the experience quite rewarding.  Here is a snapshot of how I work.

I have a main machine, its powerful, and drives three 19″ monitors, and a great wireless keyboard and mouse.  When I sit at this workstation its optimised for writing, analysing and information gathering.  I have everything to hand and hopefully will soon be getting a optimised chair so I can work for more than half an hour without too much pain.  My main PC is a Windows 2003 Server which allows me to work without admin priv, and always have an admin RDP session open for when I need it.

I have a lab server because my main machine needs to always be available, and always connected to the Internet – It’s the heart of my home network – I don’t take risks with it.  So I have another server that runs VMware GSX server that I use for all my testing, and I have one virtual machine running XP on the server that I reserve for connecting via VPN into my company network.  This machine is very clean and well protected by firewalls, AV and all the latest patches and almost no software.  I never browse the internet from this machine or access email, but it does pickup patches from the net and AV sig’s daily).  I can access the consoles of any of the Virtual machines from my main PC, and display them on any of my 3 monitors.  of course I can also use RDP to access the host server.

I have a Tablet.  I need to move around a lot, because of my medical condition my docutors recommend that I get out and about as much as I can, working in different locations in the house and cycling and walking.  When I stop for breaks for example at a cafe, in the park, on the beach etc I like to do reading and reviewing, it helps break up my day.  I want my Tablet as light as possible and I want to focus my time away from my desk on reading and reviewing, so I don’t want a keyboard and I don’t want loads of apps or Virtual Machines etc.  When I am at home my Tablet lays flat on my desk just like a paper notepad and I use it to jot notes down in OneNote when I am conference calls.  Robocopy scripts run in the background constatly keeping my “To  read” “To review” “To watch” “To listen to” and “web snippets”  folders up to date on both machines.  The final bit of the Tablet mobility puzzle is that I create collections of web pages I want to read as groups in myIE2, these groups sync to my Tablet and just before I leave I open the groups and download maybe 20-30 web pages which I can then read at my leisure. 

I find the whole tablet experience very liberating, and the maintenance of the two machines in sync effortless.  I also feel that my Tablet is a very personal device, its my music, mobile video, eBook, photo album, notepad, eWallet, mobile filing cabinet (everything paper is scanned using paperport).

I also have a company laptop which is kept very clean, just like the Virtual machine which I connect to the company network when I am actually physically in the office.  Robocopy scripts keep this machine up to date each day so I always have everything with me at work, and a backup as well.

There is more detail on how all this hangs together in the rest of my blog for anyone who is interested.

I have been frustrated for years at just how little attention most businesses give to exploiting their IT infrastructure investments.  I recently came across the book, Seize the work day, which asks the question:

Have you ever wished for a solution to a near out-of-control work day? If you are like I once was, you have often longed for a way to get and stay ahead of your work load. You have felt frustrated by hours of meetings that leave you little time to complete tasks during the day—by having to work late, night after night, to catch up on those responsibilities. You have felt frustrated by losing track of, or losing time for, commitments you have made. Frustrated by an avalanche of e-mails you cannot get to, by important documents you cannot find.

Well I guess that applies to most of us, and the book is a great example of just how much thought and attention can be applied to improving productivity and just how great the payoff can be!

I recently had the opportunity to try out a new way to manage and a record a meeting using my Tablet and OneNote, here is how it went:

1. First I created a main page for the meeting, where I recorded the location, attendees, objectives etc
2. The I created sub pages with all of the material that I had been sent about the meeting, embedded as background images, (drag and drop word documents onto OneNote and it provides this as an option).  I was then able to quickly jump to these and mark them up if I needed to
3. Then I created a sub page to keep my hand written notes
4. Finally, I plugged in a $10 microphone on an 8’ lead, put it in the middle of the room, and recorded the whole meeting. As the recording proceeded, I made short handwritten notes when key points were made.  The key thing is that I did not try to take thorough notes, just jot down a memory clue that I could use later.
5. Because I did not take extensive notes, I could remain focussed on the discussion, which is a major benefit
6. On the way home (I travelled in the by Train in the first class “quiet zone”, which by the way is really cheap if you book 7 or 14 days in advance) I listened to the whole meeting again and made more thorough notes, jotted down action points etc. The great thing was I could pause the replay of the meeting at any time if I wanted to make some detailed note, or to think something through.

Now maybe you don’t always have the luxury of sitting in first class (although second class probably makes headphones even more attractiveJ) and replaying the meeting. (for important meetings it maybe a very useful technique to remember). However, the fact that you have a full record of the meeting and all those memory clues that let you jump straight to the point in the audio record where the key point was being discussed is a major innovation.

In case you are interested, the 2.5 hour meeting was only about 8MB in size!  The only downside to the whole thing – I realised just how often I say “you know” in conversation!!

I have yet to try the same idea with video.

Back in June I handed my TC 1100 Tablet back to the project I was working on and wrote a farewell blog article where I wrote up my on off love affair with Tablet PC computing.  In that article I concluded that a Tablet did not really meet my needs a home worker.  Well as time has progressed I have missed the Tablet more and more, and eventually a great deal on eBay offer seduced me and I now have an older TC1000 with 768MB of memory and a cheap TDK PC Card Bluetooth adapter. So what changed my mind:

• I realised that I loved the slate format but hated the keyboard on the TC1*, and that all of the usage scenarios were slate format ones.  I had been trying to use my Tablet before in a multi-purpose role, I don’t do that now I have a range of machines that I use for specific purposes.  For example, almost all of my writing, evaluation and analysis work is done at my desk using my three monitor setup driving 2 Windows 2003 servers.  All of my company mobile working needs I use a IBM T40 traditional laptop, with its great keyboard.  
• So what does the Tablet get used for?  Well, it lays on the desk in slate mode as a notepad whilst I am working at my desktop.  While it lays there, robocopy runs every hour synchronising data onto it from my desktop.  Whenever I leave my desk my tablet goes with me, what does it have on it:
  
  • All the blog entries that I want to read
  • All of the web pages I want to read
  • All the documents I want to read/review
  • All of the web movies and conference sessions I want to watch
  • All of the e-Books I want to read
  • All of my email, contacts and tasks
  • eMagazines that I subscribe to
  • Maps
  • All of my Music
  • My eWallet
  • My OneNote Notebook

I will probably add the following to this list over the next few days

• All of the stuff I scan into my desktop, for example receipts, kids pictures and certificates
• Photo’s and home movies

• Any changes I make to my Tablet PC Notebook area are synced back to the desktop, as are any files I save to the Tablet PC My Documents area, otherwise currently the Tablet is maintained as a mirror of the desktop.
• Why does this work for me;  well it allows me to do a lot of research, reading and reviewing away from my desk, for example:
• When I am sitting at the side of the pool while my girls are at swimming lessons, 2 nights a week
• When I am not feeling well enough to swim myself, but take them and sit in the lounge watching them, once or twice a week
• When I am sitting by the beach having breakfast or lunch, every day
• When I am watching TV
• When I am sitting in the garden, having a break from my home office
• When I am generally out and about and find myself at a loose end, (for example taking the kids to the park)
• When I want to sit and read and eBook, I have a comfy reading chair in my bedroom where I can get away from it all if the kids are having a “mad half hour”

• It’s interesting that I purchased the Tablet with my own money.  How did I manage to justify that?  Well prior to the Tablet, all of that reading/reviewing was done on paper and used to cost about £30-40/month in paper and ink.  So in less than 18 months it will have paid for itself in direct cost savings without considering the improvement in my productivity (which is considerable) and flexibility (which is transformational) and surprisingly my bag is lighter without all of that paper and the office is a lot quieter without all of that printing!

Links and references to get you started with the concept: (also see Welcome! New Tablet PC User)

1. Tablet PC Home Page @ Microsoft
   
2. Tablet PC How-To Articles
   
3. Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition: An Overview1 Narrated Tablet PC Presentation
   
4. Resources for the Tablet PC Developer The MSDN site for Tablet PC Developers. Not a developer? You can probably skip this one.
   
5. The Tablet PC Show See some Tablet PCs in action. Even though this is primarily for developers, you get to see people actually using Tablet PCs.
   
6. If I had known then, what I know now

What Am I Getting Into Here?

Here’s a light-hearted look at the process of acquiring and owning a Tablet PC
Stages of Tablet PC Ownership
Tablet PC Events Posted by Christopher Coulter 2004/04/29

find more at:

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12320