It's gadgets time again



I went home last Monday with a Fujitsu Lifebook P1120 on loan from a client and all of a sudden my life is changing. I'm surfing the web on this petite beauty, typing my pleadings in a coffeeshop and emailing from wherever there is a phone line or wi-fi service. This is a long way to go for a boy that learned how to type with the "pindot system" in an old reliable Olympia typewriter from my Grandfather's workstation in Mindoro. I then moved to a PC XT running on DOS and wordstar 4.0 in an apartment in Project 2 Quezon City, then to a PC running Windows 98 in an Intel celeron processor in a big firm in Makati, and just recently to a Pentium II running windows ME in Roxas District.

Of course now, I'm still a boy (my wife calls me her third son). But I am now toting around this 2.2 lb touch screen laptop (no bigger than a hard bound bestseller) with Windows XP. If you were to ask me, I was happy with wordstar 4, until the internet boom came. So I conceded that maybe windows 98 with microsoft office 98 was a good upgrade. But Windows XP? After connecting to the web for thirty minutes, my little gadget got the worm called "luvsan" which terminated the system in 60 seconds. It's a good thing google led me to the cure. For three days, I've been trying to figure out how to send email with an attachment from yahoo in 60 seconds from login to click send.

So how is this lifebook affecting me? Well, I've been very distracted. Instead of being able to write the stuff I needed to write, I'm installing programs here and there. Just a moment ago, I connected it to a toy video camera and wondering if it can help me edit my first motion picture which I plan to call "The Lord with No Rings". Tomorrow, the palm hotsynch, then the printer driver, then quicken, then photojam, then the CD ripper and mp3 converter.

A lot of work this gadget is giving me -- for a machine that is supposed to make life easier. But it doesn't really matter, I'm looking forward to watching a VCD movie with it from a porch in a restaurant in hilly Tagaytay. The ultimate thing is I can blog from a Seattle's Best coffee shop. Hopefully, it can improve the frequency and quality of my posts. I guess they don't call it the "lifebook" for nothing.