City park portable computer survival guide

• Wear a black T-shirt. And don't put the screen parallel to your eyes' surface. Rather tilt it a little more upwards. The problem with a screen is it acts a little like a mirror. That's why you get disturbing light reflections on it. The solution is to turn the screen so it reflects the light coming from dark objects. They don't emit light so there won't be reflections on your screen either. But large dark objects are usually sparse in a city park. So you have to bring one with you. Best is you be that black object, by wearing the black T-shirt. In other words: turn the screen so that if it was a mirror you would see your T-shirt through it. A large black hat can add to the darkness. For the same reason a portable with a black case can be a better choice. Because that way you won't get any light reflection on the screen coming from the keyboard or from the case.
  
  
• Buy polarized sunglasses. Or if you already wear glasses, buy polarized add-ons. The light coming from the portable screen is polarized. It has the same polarization as standard polarized glasses or add-ons. So almost all of the screen light will reach your eyes. But the surrounding light is not polarized. So at most half of it will traverse the polarized glasses and reach your eyes. By wearing polarized glasses you dim down the surrounding light while keeping the brightness off your screen. (Please note I didn't try this out with all kinds of portable screens.) (Should you intent to buy glasses or add-ons and want to be sure they are polarized, you can perform this test: put two glasses or add-ons above each other and turn them. When they are parallel the light should go through both like if there was only one. At 90° inclination between the two they should become pitch black. If you only have one add-on to test, you still can check it is polarized: buy looking through them towards light reflections on windows or plastic surfaces. When you turn the glasses or add-on the reflections should dim or brighten.) (Another feature of quality sunglasses or add-ons is they allow to read a book in the sunlight.)
  
  
  
  Actually this trick was only valid for my first and very old portable with a gray and darker gray screen. Current laptop screens have a 45° polarization. Seewww.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/glasses_or_clipons_for_laptops.html
  

• Work in the shadow. That's common sense. Sometimes working out of the shadow is possible but that's not guaranteed. You have to carefully search out a work position. (Beware of insolation.)
  
  
• Tune your screen. Most screen can yield a better image when their brightness and contrast tunings are well chosen.
  
  
• If you have the choice, sit down with the Sun behind you (even if you're in the shadow). This yields globally the least light reflections on the screen. Don't ask me why. (This rule does not apply inside rooms: then the best position is often with the screen perpendicular to the window.)
  
  
• Sometimes there will be no way to avoid reflections on a part of the screen. That's a drawback of wide screens. Well, reduce the size of your working window so it gets out of the reflections. Better work on a little windows with no reflections than on a huge window that gives you a headache.
  
  
• Try using bigger fonts.
  
  
• Try using reverse video. That is white characters on a black background. Since reflections are white it may seem logical to work on a white background, to hide them away. But surprisingly I get a better comfort with a black background. Maybe because that way the reflections appear clearly and my brains can better deal with them. Another explanation is less overall screen brightness makes the eye pupils widen. So the text becomes more visible. (This implies if you work on little window, that uses only a part of the screen, you should set a black background for the rest of the screen.)
  
  
• When you choose a new portable computer, take into account the quality of the anti-reflection treatment of the screen.
  
  

• Have a sparse battery and don't forget to reload it. This depends on your portable's autonomy and the kind of work you intend to do.
  
  
• Make frequent backups of your files. Save them often and make frequent backups on a floppy, memory stick or the like. Using a multitasking operating system is great to achieve this: the backups can be made constantly, by a background daemon. I use two floppy disks: one inside the portable and one in my pocket. I swap them every half an hour. That way if I loose my portable, get it stolen or if the hard disk breaks down, I keep my files. (Maybe ask a friend who's into computers to write or install inside your portable a software or routine to make the backups automatically or to allow you to trigger them with a few keystrokes. You don't want too loose five minutes each ten minutes to get your backups done, don't you?)
  
  
• Use an effective operating system, that stops the processor when it is not required. Less efficient systems keep the processor operating even when there is nothing to do. So the batteries are being used up.
  
  
• Tune the energy saving of your portable. Depending on the kind of work you do, it can be rewarding to tune the hard disk to shut down when it is not in use. This saves energy. But it can be tiresome for some kinds of work, if the hard disk is used frequently.
  
  
• Buy a on old second-hand portable and put a rustic little operating system in it. This again depends on the kind of work you're doing. You may require a modern portable with its full operating system and software. But if you just have to type texts like me, an old '486 portable perfectly does the job. I installed FreeDOS and PEDIT on it. The advantage of doing so is you loose far less if you get your portable broken or stolen. Your portable boots very fast and you can even boot and work solely on the floppy disk.
  
  
• Learn to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. When you just sit on a bench in a city park, a mouse is not usable. The portable's touchpad or bubbon can help but they are often slow and cumbersome. Best is to learn using the keyboard shortcuts of your operating system and software. For example holding the Ctrl key down, hitting the S key and releasing the Ctrl key, often is enough to save the document you're working on. That's at least ten times faster than using the portable's pointing devices. Nearly everything can be performed using only the keyboard: text or cells selection, copy & paste, windows maximization or minimization... You can also learn to use command consoles and basic commands of your operating system.
  
  
• Learn to use the touchpad of your portable (if it has one) and how to tune it. A friend told me that out of the box his portable's touchpad is slow and cumbersome. But once he tuned it he got close to a mouse's efficiency. He even makes technical drawings with it.
  
  
• Most important thread to get your portable lost or stolen in the park is yourself. So be disciplined. Don't deposit it somewhere. Keep it in your hands or wear it inside its case. If the case has a belt, put it around your neck and place the case on your belly. Maybe buy a pair of those little devices that warn when they get separated: you keep one in your pocket and the other is latched to the portable. Once the distance between the two becomes too important, the one in your pocket will beep. Glue a sticker on the portable with your phone number or an e-mail address, because not every people that may find your portable are robbers.