A day in the life of my UX
Category UX280P
It has been a little over a month and I am completely settled into my UX280P. It is exactly the form factor I needed to purchase, highly powered and highly portable.
Aside from the improvements I think that Sony should make that I listed here, there is not much I would change with this device.
I have MS Office 2003 Pro, Lotus Notes 7.0.2 (client, designer, and admin) Crystal Report 11 Developer Ed, MS Visual Studio 2005 Pro (C++, VB.net and C#.net), Oracle 9i client/admin, MS SQL 2003 admin client, WinSQL, MS Dynamics (used to be Great Plains) client, MS Visual Studio 6.0 (VB only), Macromedia Captivate, Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro, PowerDVD, Magic DVD Ripper, IE7, FireFox 2, FeedDemon 2.1, PSP7, Audible.com client, WMP 11, Plaze's Plazer, Second Life Client, and Nero, plus a host of other small utilities for a wide variety of purposes. Additionally, there are 11.1GB of music and 2.4GB of photos.
My day works pretty much like this:
Occasionally I will attend seminars, meet with vendors, travel to a customer/agent office, or get stuck somewhere for a couple of hours when I don't have anything to do (like Purdue University's Super Saturday program for E in the Fall/Spring) and be able to whip out the UX and get busy. Having WWAN access is a definite plus when visiting customers and agents...nothing quite as impressive as fixing issues on the spot in front of the customer (it also gives me a chance to discuss our security practices when they see how big of a threat there really is.)
The absolute best thing about the UX is its portability. I have had notebooks continuously for the last 10 years and I HATE/LOATH/DEPLORE dragging around the notebook bag because I tend to load it up with 'stuff' and it becomes more of a pain then a convenience. With the UX, I slip it into its padded case, tuck that into my jacket pocket or carry it like a man-purse and away I go. If anyone questions my masculinity (the man-purse thing) I simply power up the UX and instead of having my masculinity question I become uber-geek and end up answering questions about computers/WLAN/Internet (if the questioner is a fellow geek, the conversation tends toward WWAN.)
The sheer ease of moving the UX about more than makes up for its cost.
By the way, I have a total of 74.9GB local HD storage (after the upgrade) and currently there is only 20.9GB free (I have four ripped dvds or it would be closer to 32GB free.) I really needed that extra space to make this thing work!
It has been a little over a month and I am completely settled into my UX280P. It is exactly the form factor I needed to purchase, highly powered and highly portable.
Aside from the improvements I think that Sony should make that I listed here, there is not much I would change with this device.
I have MS Office 2003 Pro, Lotus Notes 7.0.2 (client, designer, and admin) Crystal Report 11 Developer Ed, MS Visual Studio 2005 Pro (C++, VB.net and C#.net), Oracle 9i client/admin, MS SQL 2003 admin client, WinSQL, MS Dynamics (used to be Great Plains) client, MS Visual Studio 6.0 (VB only), Macromedia Captivate, Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro, PowerDVD, Magic DVD Ripper, IE7, FireFox 2, FeedDemon 2.1, PSP7, Audible.com client, WMP 11, Plaze's Plazer, Second Life Client, and Nero, plus a host of other small utilities for a wide variety of purposes. Additionally, there are 11.1GB of music and 2.4GB of photos.
My day works pretty much like this:
- Wake up and power the UX on and log in (it is set to turn on the WLAN and TMobile on login)
- Take care of the necessities (shower, shave, etc)
- Connect to the office LAN via VPN and check the servers and logs.
- Check email and RSS feeds for excitement.
- Open WMP and start driving music playlist. Put UX into 'Hold' mode (this lock prevents any 'input' into the UX but allows processing to continue...it powers off the display though)
- Grab breakfast bar for on the go eating
- Plug in Belkin TuneCast and Drive to work
- Get to work and dock the UX (the UX recognizes the dock event and automatically shifts the monitor settings to VGA out only, also my dock has a wired USB keyboard (MS Natural 4000) and a wireless Logitech Revolution MX mouse, an HP Litescribe dvd 840, and a Western Digital My Book Pro 500GB external drive.)
- Recheck servers and logs
- Check email and RSS feeds
- Start Day's Work - Report writing, programming, technical documentation. data cleaning, EOM stuff, etc
- Sync Playlist to my SanDisk DAP for workout at lunch
- Workout at lunch (MWF) OR eat lunch at Jasmine (Thai place) on T & Th after starting a DVD rip session of new media
- Check email and RSS feeds
- Do Remainder of Day's Work
- Check email and RSS feeds before leaving office, make sure that DVD done ripping before undocking (made that mistake once)
- Stop by Starbucks, get iced coffee, connect to T-Mobile, check personal email/feeds and Pilot-Odyssey.com website, then either listen to audio book or read web/blog content while attempting to unwind for thirty minutes or so; maybe begin blog article
- Stop by father-in-law's (mother's, co-worker's, friend's, etc) and fix computer/local network/Internet connection (WWAN and USB memory stick very helpful here to download replacement drivers, etc)
- Pick E up from TKD, check news via WWAN while waiting for her class to end
- Get home and help S with dinner or play with Z and E
- Eat dinner
- Connect UX to power and WLAN at home and help E with homework
- Check email/feeds
- Watch ripped dvd while E&Z watch episode #12343 of Hannah Montana for the 30th time in the last two weeks
- Send kids to bathe/bed
- Watch some CSI:xxxxxx show, lookup info re: actors via Google and IMDB
- Send Z back to bed
- Jot down thoughts re: solution for programming problem I have been having at work, or if it is a really cool idea, write pseudocode, if it is an awesome idea, code the whole thing from home and skip the next four bullet points (jump to repeat)
- Put UX in hibernate and leave plugged in
- Send Z back to bed again
- Sleep
- Send Z back to bed yet again
- Repeat
Occasionally I will attend seminars, meet with vendors, travel to a customer/agent office, or get stuck somewhere for a couple of hours when I don't have anything to do (like Purdue University's Super Saturday program for E in the Fall/Spring) and be able to whip out the UX and get busy. Having WWAN access is a definite plus when visiting customers and agents...nothing quite as impressive as fixing issues on the spot in front of the customer (it also gives me a chance to discuss our security practices when they see how big of a threat there really is.)
The absolute best thing about the UX is its portability. I have had notebooks continuously for the last 10 years and I HATE/LOATH/DEPLORE dragging around the notebook bag because I tend to load it up with 'stuff' and it becomes more of a pain then a convenience. With the UX, I slip it into its padded case, tuck that into my jacket pocket or carry it like a man-purse and away I go. If anyone questions my masculinity (the man-purse thing) I simply power up the UX and instead of having my masculinity question I become uber-geek and end up answering questions about computers/WLAN/Internet (if the questioner is a fellow geek, the conversation tends toward WWAN.)
The sheer ease of moving the UX about more than makes up for its cost.
By the way, I have a total of 74.9GB local HD storage (after the upgrade) and currently there is only 20.9GB free (I have four ripped dvds or it would be closer to 32GB free.) I really needed that extra space to make this thing work!
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