When Computers Go Bad on the Road

The worst nightmare any business traveler can have is simple: A dead computer at the start of the business day. 

 

For me, that nightmare occurred at 8 AM on January 6, at the start of the LG press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show, or “CES (News - Alert),” in Las Vegas – about 2,000 miles away from home. It wasn't pleasant, but hopefully you can pick up a few preventive tips from my experience regardless of your business size and IT staffing level.

 

First some background: From August 2008 to last month, my primary road machine was an Acer (News - Alert) Aspire One netbook computer. I joked with Rich Tehrani that it was close to an “expendable” machine at a then-$350 list price – people easily pay more for unlocked phones and Microsoft (News - Alert) Office upgrades.

 

If I do some back-of-the-envelope math, so $350 for 16 months of life, I “paid” about $21.88 per month for having a lightweight computer/conversation piece that I carried around everywhere without having to think about it. Perhaps naively, I thought the netbook would hold up for 24 to 36 months before it would start to show its age and it would offer some hints before it kicked the bucket.

 

Fortunately, I had done some pre-planning on the theory that sooner or later I would end up replacing the netbook and it came in handy in an emergency run to Best Buy purchasing a new HP laptop and scrambling to make it functional over the next week.

 

I don't expect you do to everything I've got outlined below, but based upon my hard-earned experience, I would suggest the following before you leave the office:

 

- Print out vital information on paper: yes, it's not very green, but hardcopies of your agenda, a company phone list, and any presentations/notes you may need is recommended.

 

- Have a backup of vital information, such as presentations or documents, stored on a USB stick or SD media. If you have a Bluetooth-enabled phone, you can put a copy there if you're going to buy a Bluetooth-enabled computer; bonus points if the phone has a MicroSD card – but make sure you have a larger SD “reader” card tucked away.

 

- Similarly, have a “contingency kit” of software packages and drivers you really need on USB/SD/phone to get you back up and running. 3G software is the biggest “gotcha” I ran into, but account settings for roaming Wi-Fi services and settings to access email if you go the POP3/IMAP route are also good.

 

- Have a way to get access to necessary software license keys, either by storing a copy in a file or on-line in some sort of “locker” or cloud storage; Microsoft is good for this if you buy keys online. 

 

- If you can, use a cloud service for holding login and personal info.   For example, Symantec (News - Alert) Norton 360 offers an “Identify Safe” to securely store and manage information.

 

- Back up your work documents and other vital information to corporate network storage. 

 

- When's the last time you backed up your phone/PDA? You'd be surprised at how many people have “lost” phones in trips to the rest room. 

 

- Walk through policies and procedures for “Traveler in distress -- dead computer.” If you have a big enough IT department, and in an ideal world, there are a couple of “hot spare” machines kept up to date with the latest software revisions – including the Tuesday Microsoft security updates -- ready go into a box and FedEx’ed out to your location the next day.

 

Finally, should the worst happen, bring home the dead corpse!