I Finally Drank the Google Kool-Aid.
We have 6 active computers. At least I think that’s about right. Let’s count: 1 Averatec 17” wide-screen laptop (which I love despite it’s weight), 1 15” Dell laptop (which was my son’s but now the school furnishes laptops), 1 Dell I use for writing (it’s at the desk in my den), 1 Dell in my redhead’s office (mostly checking email and weather), and each of my sons has a desktop Dell they use at school.
I need to point out that I am not a geek. I can’t take them apart. I don’t know how fast the processors are or how much memory they have.
Why do I have so many computers? Well, it’s a long story. Computers are cheap. For the last several years instead of “upgrading” my computers it was cheaper to simply buy a new one (except for the laptops.)
On a regular basis I have found myself opening up my laptop only to find the file I needed was on one of the other computers. While they are networked when I am at home, if I go out of town I have to think ahead to any files I might need and make sure I have them on my laptop. At home I often find I need to power up my laptop just to retrieve a file to my main working computer.
It was getting old.
Several months ago I tried out Google Docs, thinking I could them have my working files online. That worked OK, though the document tools are a little limited.
But today I explored other things Google can do for me—since I was well aware of the Google docs and Gmail, I wondered what other online tools I could utilize to make my life better.
Google calendar is wonderful. I could do a whole post on how I am using it. I probably will one of these days.
But that only whet my appetite. The real killer app I had never tried before was iGoogle.
iGoogle is a application that allows you to create an individualized home page where you can put all sorts of things to make your life more interesting and your workday easier.
Here’s a screen shot of my homepage (click for full size):
If you haven’t tried it, give it a shot. It makes me excited to have a web page where I can organize all my work and access it from any internet connected computers in the world.
Now I am basically paperless. And thumbdrive-less.
Pretty cool.
August 17, 2008 at 11:54 am
[...] Paperless Home Office: From My Other Blog is a Porsche. It’s mainly a love-fest post for iGoogle, but it shows how the power of a single application or device can help you make the leap forward. For me, that device was the Amazon Kindle, but for every worker, there’s a different choke point for going paperless. [...]