Portable computing - the LAPSTICK!

In Fridays effective learning session we explored the idea of student 2.0. I would like to recap some of the ideas I worked through.

Some of the students had laptops - most would like one. But they are expensive and its quite possible to do your studying without one. However its nice to have a personal computing environment within which to work. So I proposed the lapstick idea.

Using a 2 - 4 gig USB stick you can load a number of applications, then run these via whichever machine at the University you happen to be working at. Then when at home you can continue working in the same environment on your desktop machine. With USB sticks now costing a mere £10 this makes it particularly cheap and convenient. But how do you do this?

First you have to consider the 'platform' issue. Namely WINDOWS or APPLE MAC. At Bathspa we use a mixture - Macs in the labs, mostly PCs (but not exclusively) in the Library.

Starting with the PC option. You need to first download a program that will permit you to run apps from a USB stick. Then load the apps as well. Fortunately someone has done all the leg work for you. You can download the whole package - including a selection of applications wrapped in the application that will allow you to piggy back on the 'host' PC. Visit portableapps.com . There you can download the standard suite - later deleting any applications you don't want. The whole process takes about 20 mins. If you want to do this, do it on a PC. The key application is the portable version of firefox.

Now the Mac version - in some ways this is easier since Macs have permitting this way of working for ages. You need to just find the individual applications you want, download and install on the USB stick. You will find them at free smug.org. I would suggest that you start with the portable version of Firefox . For Media students I would suggest that you add the VLC media player, Audacity - the audio editor and Open Office - word processing etc.

Of course it would be great if we didn't have to run different version of firefox across the platforms. So that it wouldn't matter if weere using firefox on a PC then on a Mac. The browser and be consistent. Well it might be possible. More next time.