Try to get in the habit of shutting off any background programs and discon-
necting from the Internet before running a defragger. In certain conditions, if
your system checks for e-mail or updates a Web page in the middle of a defrag-
mentation session it will cause the utility to start the process over again.
Can you see me now?.........................................................................
If you travel with a digital camera or prepare PowerPoint or other presenta-
tions using images, your laptop travel kit should include graphic database
and editing tools.
From my point of view, the reigning database champion here is ACDSee, which
allows you to organize, convert format, and quickly find images stored on
your machine. For information on this product, consult http://www.acdsystems.com.
Some digital cameras provide similar software as one of the software utilities.
(As an example, Nikon offers Picture Project.) Any database is better than
just dumping your pictures into a single folder, but I prefer the tools offered
by ACDSee.
When it comes to editing your photos, line art, and screen captures for presen-
tations or printing, the market offers a number of products. But the longtime
champion, still unsurpassed, is Adobe Photoshop, which is available in a full-
featured professional version that includes image manipulation and restoration
as well as bitmap drawing facilities (Adobe Photoshop CS2) and an extremely
capable but smaller and less expensive version aimed at photo and image
manipulation (Adobe Photoshop Elements). You can find information about
both products at http://www.adobe.com.
Can you hear me now?.......................................................................
For many of you road warriors, laptops also serve as sound studios. In my case
I often conduct interviews using a microcassette recorder or a digital recorder,
and I sometimes use those audio files in PowerPoint presentations or to upload
audio to my office for transcription. The source can be a microphone, a line
input from an external device such as a tape recorder or receiver, or a down-
loaded WAV, MP3, or other digital file received over the Internet.
What can possibly go wrong? Well, just as an example, I use an external
microphone that I clip onto the collar of people I interview. In the best case,
the person I am interviewing is wearing clothing that allows the mike to sit a
few inches away from the body, the subject speaks clearly, and there is no
significant background noise. In the worst case, the microphone is muffled by
clothing, the speaker has a weak voice, and the wind is howling or a fan is
running or some sort of buzz, hiss, or repetitive noise in the background
makes the file either difficult to understand or unusable in a presentation.
Chapter 19: Essential Utilities for Laptop Users 297