What-I-Carry-Wednesday: A Minimalist Mobile Office

One of the great parts about my job is that I can work from nearly anywhere. As you can imagine, this means I take my mobile office needs quite seriously. My ideal setup is:

• Lightweight and easy to take along. I like to be available to help customers no matter where I am, which means that I'll often bring along my setup even if I'm not planning to do any work. Smaller is better.
• Should be capable of doing heavy duty work. Sure, my G2's ssh terminal app could be considered a mobile office in and of itself, but I need a setup that can allow me to get serious programming done.
• Should be worry free and easy to replace. The last thing I want to do is lose a major asset if a laptop gets dropped or left somewhere.
• Be a gateway to the cloud. I've got various remote servers I can and do work off of, and all my documents live in Google Docs. Bottom line: as long as I've got a web connection, I'm good to go.

The second point is especially important, and I keep myself honest by using my mobile setup as my computer of choice over the weekend. While I wouldn't want to use this compact setup exclusively, it's good to know that it works for getting real work done.

OK, enough talk, here's what's in my kit:

• Samsung N150 - it's lightweight, has great battery power and is dirt cheap to replace. With the RAM upgrade, hosts Chrome well and servers as an excellent cloud platform.
• Etymotic Research headphones - headphones are absolutely key. With a little chill music playing, even the noisiest of environments can become a good workplace. From airplanes, bars, casinos, you name it - they can all be excellent places to work once the noise has been masked. I'm hardly an audiophile, but I've enjoyed Etymotic Researche's headphones enough to buy a second pair. I find them compact and comfortable. Tip: these days I plug the headphones into my cell phone and listen to Pandora there, rather than on my laptop. That takes a little load off the netbook, which is always a good thing..
• USB cable - let's me charge my cell phone off my netbook. The N100 has a charging friendly USB port, so you can use it to charge a device even when the laptop is off.
• USB wall adapter - let's me plug cell phone right into a wall without bothering to schelp out the laptop.
• USB car adapter - haven't tried this yet, so I'm not sure how long it will remain in my little bag of goodies. However, whenever I travel my G2 totally gets run down and being able to charge it in the car should be a big win.
• 3 prong to 2 prong adapter - The N100's AC adapter is small (and d'oh, not pictured above!), but it requires a 3 prong outlet. So far, this hasn't been a problem, but I've been carrying this orange 2 prong adapter to avoid a gotcha.
• Audio splitter - this little gem allows two people (the wife and myself, typically) to be listening to the same laptop. Perfect for watching a movie on the plane, or in the hotel room with a sleeping baby. While not really an office essential, it's definitely an essential.
• T-mobile USB Stick - this little do-dad gets me internet access anywhere I get cell signal (we're talking T-mobile here, so that's not exactly everywhere). It's been more than a lifesaver. On our most recent trip, I found cellular more reliable than the hotel's WiFi. In theory I could tether my G2 to my laptop, and avoid the extra piece of hardware. However, I frequently need to use my phone and laptop at the same time, so having multiple devices seems to work well.

Not shown: the AC adapter for the laptop.

The above may not be much, but for a programming, blogging and general web surfing system goes, it works.