(And from my point of view, I had no interest in exposing my laptop to
whatever viruses, spyware, and malware there might be circulating on
the public access machines.) The solution: I copied the file from my
laptop to a memory key and then plugged the key into an open USB con-
nection on the Internet cafe machine. The key became an extra hard
drive on the system, and I was able to easily attach a file to an outgoing
e-mail. I erased the key, reformatted it, and scanned it for viruses before
I used it again on my laptop.
I needed to print a file from my laptop to make a presentation, and the
only available printer in the office I was visiting was a standalone
machine. No Ethernet and no WiFi. It did have a floppy disk drive, but
my new laptop didn’t. One thing both machines had in common was a
USB port. I copied the file to the key, then moved it to the other machine
and printed the file from the word processor installed there. (As a side
benefit, my file never resided on the hard drive of the borrowed machine,
and so I did not have to worry about the confidentiality of the informa-
tion I was printing; it has semi-permanent residence only on the key.)In a similar situation, I arrived with an Excel spreadsheet on my PC-
based laptop and found that (horrors!) the office standard was Apple
Macintosh machines. No problem: Copy the file to the USB key, move
it over to the Mac, and upload it with the software on that foreign
machine.
And finally, there is this: Suppose you need to transfer some data from
your desktop or laptop and have no other reason to lug a computer from
one place to another and do not have any details about the machine you
will use when you arrive at your destination. (This is a fairly common
situation when I travel to remote corners of the world. I cannot be cer-
tain that a machine will be connected to the Internet or that the speed
will be sufficient to allow me to download a file I send to myself — which
is one solution to this kind of problem.) An easy solution, though, is to
copy the file to a USB key and carry its two or three ounces of weight in
my pocket instead of several pounds on my shoulder.Need I Point out the Need for a Presentation Tool? ................................
One common use of a laptop for business travelers is to deliver a presentation —
in a customer’s office, the board room, or a large forum to accompany a speech.
Specialized software like PowerPoint helps you point with pride and view with
alarm a presentation that would impress Steven Spielberg and make The Donald
say, “You’re hired.”Chapter 22: Ten of My Favorite Things 329