JeffKirvin.net

As regular readers know, I’m almost pathologically indecisive. Actually, that’s not right. I’m fiercely decisive, but only at the moment I make a decision. I could easily reverse my opinion in five minutes. In short, I’m a flip-flopper. I’m not “resolute.” So it should thus come as no surprise to regular readers that I’m rethinking my “do everything on the desktop” mindset.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes I don’t want to be chained to my desk. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this article using my phone and my iGo Bluetooth keyboard at a local Chipotle restaurant (I do love me some burritos). Capturing thoughts on the go (and being able to review them on the go) is still an important consideration for me. And the idea of just emailing stuff to myself doesn’t work as well as I might have hoped.

The problem with email is one of sessions. If I don’t complete an article or a scene in one sitting, how do I pick up where I left off later? I could reply to the email, thus sending another email to myself, but then email quoting becomes a formatting hassle I have to clean up later. Email is still great for capturing ideas I want to investigate later, but it doesn’t work for actual composition.

Google Docs, limited as it is compared to Word, is still too fancy to work in Internet Explorer Mobile, so that’s not an option.

Which sadly brings me back to Word Mobile. Writing in Word on my phone solves two problems, but adds a significant third. It makes it easy to continue where I left off and allows me to optionally sync things from my desktop to my device for further work on the go. However, it also depends on Windows Mobile Device Center, which can be… twitchy.

Fortunately, the Vista group is about to release WMDC 6.1 (really 1.1, but I’ve long since given up on Microsoft version numbers making any kind of sense), which is supposed to fix all kinds of bug and greatly improve file syncing while bringing file sync to WM6 Standard (Smartphone) devices. So maybe if I hang in there, my syncing issues (fixed temporarily on my Vista box by moving my sync cable to a different USB port, don’t ask me why that worked) will disappear.

Of course, that opens up two more cans of worms. One being that Word Mobile currently can’t open and save Office 2007’s .docx files, meaning that until Microsoft releases the update (due out “this summer”) I have to save anything I might want to keep on my device in Word 2003 format. Not a big deal, but I do prefer the new format and would be much more upset about this if an update weren’t in the works. For now, though, I need to downconvert all the files I’m actively working on before syncing them to my phone.

The second issue is a little bigger and frankly more of a stumper. I’ve become quite the OneNote devotee since installing Office 2007 Ultimate on my PC and I’ve restructured my Documents folder in Vista to consist almost entirely of OneNote sections, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets inside folders that OneNote uses as notebooks. OneNote is really slick in how it uses folders as notebooks, allowing you to store other documents and data on your hard drive right along sides sections in the relevant notebook.

There’s just one problem. OneNote Mobile sucks.

I’ve written about OneNote Mobile before, so I won’t go into detail here, but suffice to say that all the information I’ve laboriously compiled into OneNote over the past few weeks is now completely inaccessible to my mobile device. Even if I wanted to sync it to my phone the same way I handle Word documents, that’s not an option. So if I want to be able to refer to that information while I’m on the go, how do I do it?

The obvious answer is to use the organizational tricks I’ve learned from using OneNote to get rid of OneNote: create folders from each section and copy & paste the content of each page into a Word doc or text file in those folders. The data would still be indexed and instantly searchable by Vista, but it could also be easily synced to my phone. I’d losing some of the easy data capture through Outlook and Internet Explorer, but not as much as you’d think. Most of the stuff I’d be giving up would be the handwritten notes features, which I don’t use, not having a tablet PC.

Of course, that is the other option. Instead of carrying my (pocketable) Bluetooth Stowaway around, I could carry a (not remotely pocketable) laptop instead, and just move all my data to that, use it as my primary PC and turn my existing tower into a dedicated gaming machine. Of course, this is also the most expensive option, and I probably won’t be able to afford it until year end anyway.

So for now, I still want the best of both worlds. I want the power of my desktop when I’m at home, but I want the freedom to work on the same projects when I’m not home. What should I do?