In The Bag
If you’re a mobile IT exec in the federal government — and frankly, who in IT isn’t on the go? — what you can carry in your bag often must add up to a portable office of sorts. So what tech goodies and gadgets should make the cut? Here are 10 cool and weight-worthy items to consider toting along.
1. Bag: Start off with a bag that can stow your tech ware securely but also provide you easy access. The Targus TTL500 is designed with the road warrior in mind: It has an extra padded compartment for a second notebook, a projector or even a camera.
2. Notebook: You can go super small with a netbook or a mini, such as the HP Mini 2140, which weighs 2.6 pounds but has 2GB of RAM and runs a full Windows Office suite.
3. Smartphone: The BlackBerry Bold can do triple duty — as a phone, mail minder and officemate; Word-, PowerPoint- and Excel-compatible apps allow viewing and editing of Office files.
4. Flash drive: To tote files securely and on your person, check out the IronKey Enterprise USB drive; it has FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation.
5. Keyboard: If you spend a lot of time typing, then a portable keyboard is not a luxury. The Unotron FlexiTuff FT10 can stand up to spills: Rinse it, dry it and roll it up. 6. Mouse: The Iogear Phaser 3-in-1 GME422RW6, a wireless mouse and presenter, works up to 30 feet from a notebook (and even has a laser pointer).
7. Cooling pad: Avoid scorched thighs (silently) with a fanless Thermaltake iXoft R15ON01 notebook pad.
8. Projector: At less than 2 pounds and small enough to fit in your palm, the Samsung P400 is a projector that you actually can toss in your bag.
9. Scanner: The Visioneer Roadwarrior scanner weighs in at 10.6 ounces, scans 36-bit color and can be powered by a USB port.
10. Headset: Create your own environment anywhere by blocking out surrounding noise with the Sennheiser MM 200 Bluetooth stereo in-ear headset. So get out of the office — what are you waiting for?
