03/18/2012
"Uber" Portable Microstation as Easy as 1, 2, 3...
In the quest to be productive from wherever your travels take you and to maintain the ultra-portable pack we have come up with the ultimate in Uber-Portable solutions, a microstation. In three easy steps you can create a efficient work space that will provide a functional work experience on the beach, in the car, or practically anywhere the creative juices flow well.
First install an Office-like application to handle word processing on either your droid or iPhone system. In this case I used Quick Office. It is a $15 app that is ubiquitous across any platform. It also creates and edits Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even Adobe PDF files in standard MS Office format; so sharing with other and finalization on a full-size system later is not an issue. You can also use Polaris Office, a free application pre-installed on my Galaxy phone.
Secondly you need a method to get the document(s) off the device and into a full sized system for finalization and delivery. In this example I installed the FREE app "SugarSync" to facilitate synchronizing files from the device to your PC, iPad, Mac or any other device. This cloud-based system is free and eliminates the need to connect the device to transfer file. You could also use DropBox, iCloud, or a plethora of other solutions. SugarSynch gives you 5GB of free storage which is plenty for most users.
Finally we all know that typing on the phone’s microscopic keyboard is ludicrous; unless you are a Pikie. The solution is to connect a full-size keyboard that is comfortable to type on and provides full capabilities (like arrow buttons) to your phone. I used a Zagg/Logitech Bluetooth keyboard that works on my iPad. After a 30 second pairing with my Samsung Galaxy phone I was able to use my phone as a full featured microstation. The external keyboard removed the need to display a keyboard on the screen returning the ultra-valuable screen real-estate back to the word processing application. Matter of fact this article was drafted on the microstation and finalized on a standard notebook.
So with a little inginuity you can create a microstation with the full Office editing capabilities anywhere you want. Editing Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents are no longer relegated to the full-size computer environments. Will I compose my dissertation on the microstation? No, but a few chapters being drafted in an area or situation where all I have is my phone are easily doable.
