A Day in the Life of a Road Warrior

Jim is an ordinary guy. A family guy. He is a brand manager for Clorox, in charge of their Kingsford Charcoal product. And this is his Monday: Jim wakes up a half-hour later than usual, and his kids are already awake and getting ready to go downstairs for breakfast. Jim has a business trip to St. Louis today, and needs to catch a plane later this morning. He races through his shower and heads downstairs. At the breakfast table, he flicks on his cPC to check the weather in St Louis and his flight schedule on United. The instant-on capabilities of Windows Mobile 5 for Internet Explorer, has him looking at the Yahoo page in less than 5 seconds. He’s happy that the device has an 800 X 480 display with a touch screen and not a small 320 X 240 resolution like what he had on his old PDA, so Jim can view the web page without much scrolling. Through the Compact Flash slot, Jim is using an 802.11 wireless card and his data reception is pretty fast and reliable throughout the whole house.

Because Jim’s cPC runs both Windows Mobile 5 and Tablet XP, Jim’s mobile Microsoft Outlook is also instantly on while his Tablet XP is in hibernate. Jim notices an e-mail from his boss asking if he can stop in at the St Louis office to check on some advertising layouts. Jim pulls up an on-screen keyboard and types a quick note in reply through the touch screen. Since Jim’s cPC is a dual operating system device, running both Windows Mobile AND Tablet XP, Jim does not worry about synchronizing the new e-mail from his boss, since it is automatically synchronized without ActiveSync to and from the Tablet XP Outlook resident on his cPC.

Jim’s wife is hurrying to get the kids ready for school, so that she won’t be late for work. As Jim says good-bye, she asks if he isn’t forgetting a bag. No need for an extra laptop bag, Jim smiles, because the cPC fits right in his jacket pocket. Jim jumps in the car and plugs in his 3G data card into the Compact Flash slot so he can continue to receive e-mails while he is driving, Jim also plugs in his cPC into the charger. He forgot to charge it overnight, but his 1-hour commute to the office will be more than enough time to re-charge the Lithium Polymer batteries to full capacity that lasts 8 hours in Mobile-Mode and 2-3 hours in Computer-Mode. While he is driving, Jim has his cPC read out loud a dozen other e-mails using the text-to-speech software he bought recently. As Jim is driving he thinks to himself, the great thing about the cPC being a Windows Mobile and Tablet XP UMPC is that virtually any software will run on it because it’s not a compatible device, it is a Windows Logo Certified Windows Mobile and Tablet XP computer.

At the office, Jim grabs a couple of manila folders and stuffs them into his briefcase. He doesn't worry much about leaving something behind, and he doesn't have to synchronize any computer files, because his cPC is his only computer – it has 1 GB of NAND Flash thru Windows Mobile 5, in addition, his 30 GB drive has two years of archived e-mail and every single document he has ever produced since he came to Clorox. He decides to grab a new PowerPoint presentation from the Corporate Intranet, so he plugs in his 802.11 CF card into the cPC, he also connects the cPC to his Port Replicator then drags the required file onto his cPC, which is now acting as a Desktop Computer. Jim also is now connected to the Corporate Exchange Server and synchronizes to the Exchange Server, picking up more unread e-mail messages, automatically synchronizing his e-mail with the Corporate Exchange Server. Jim opens the PowerPoint document with Microsoft Office PowerPoint resident in the Tablet XP side of this cPC and views it on the 17" external monitor connected to his Port Replicator, but then looks at his watch and decides that he better get to the airport. As Jim removes cPC from the Port Replicator, he doesn't need to close down PowerPoint -- the image simply goes dark on the external monitor, and reappears on the cPC LCD. The Port Replicator requires no shut-down, because it is essentially just a large screen and a collection of peripherals that operate off of the cPC. Jim plugs in his 3G data card into the cPC on his way out of the office. Jim decides to leave his car in the office garage and take the train to the airport. He reviews the PowerPoint on the way there using Tablet XP and Microsoft Office, makes a few edits and as he flips through the flash-animated slides -- complete with accompanying audio score -- the person sitting next to him asks if it's a new kind of portable DVD Player or PS2 gaming device that he's using. Jim explains that it's actually just his computer.

The train arrives at the airport and as Jim approaches his gate, he switches the cPC screen to the VOIP application and makes a quick call to his wife at her office to let her know that he got to the airport on time. As he boards the plane, Jim observes the signs and puts Chameleon into flight mode before powering off. By using flight mode he can power up the device when allowed later in the flight and not have to worry about breaking FCC rules with wireless transmissions in flight. In St. Louis, Jim picks up his rental car and heads to his first appointment. Jim simply pushes the power button and the cPC comes up in a couple of seconds and Jim brings up Internet Explorer thru Windows Mobile 5, and using Mapquest.com types in his origin and destination, Mapquest displays the driving directions and Jim now understands how to get to the St. Louis office of Clorox. Jim could have just as easily used his Microsoft Streets and Trips software typing in the origin and destination of this trip. The software would have mapped his route and spoken back the first directions -- turn right out of the parking lot and head south toward the turnpike, but the directions were easy and using Windows Mobile Internet Explorer was sufficient, no need to use Windows Tablet XP just for directions.  

Jim arrives at the St. Louis office of Clorox and meets with the graphic design team. The new images have been approved by Corporate, and need to be adopted immediately. Jim realizes that the PowerPoint presentation that he just reviewed needs to be updated with the new images. There is no docking system for the cPC in this office, so Jim simply connects the cPC to the designer's workstation with a USB cable, and the workstation recognizes the cPC as an external drive. Jim copies the new images and pastes them into the PowerPoint presentation. He unplugs and heads over to the client meeting. Jim could have just as easily accomplished the same task with his USB stick. Jim is very happy that he has ALL of his files on the 30 GB hard disk and has the power of Tablet XP for these types of tasks. Jim’s cPC beeps with an SMS instant message alerting him that the meeting has been delayed 30 minutes from his Windows Mobile 5 SMS software application. Jim has the receptionist show him into the conference room and he decides to set up anyway. There is an LCD projector sitting on the table, so Jim plugs into the cPC’s mini-to-full-size VGA port, brings up Tablet XP out of hibernate, and fires up PowerPoint. The file comes up on the big screen, and Jim flips through it one last time and then puts the cPC into hibernate. Five executives from the client company enter the room, and after some small-talk, they sit down and listen to the presentation. Jim had hooked up some self-powered speakers to the cPC’s audio-out jack, and the clients are blown away by the sound.

At the end of the presentation, they ask for Jim to set up another meeting with them to discuss an ongoing business relationship. Jim takes some notes on the cPC with the Tablet XP handwriting recognition software, and saves his notes in Microsoft Word. Jim pulls up a standard letter-of-intent agreement written in Word, and WinFaxes it to the nearest fax machine so that the client can review the document in hardcopy. Heading back to the airport from the meeting, Jim gets an e-mail addressed to the group-list of his Harvard Business School class. The annual alumni golf tournament is next month, so he makes reservations and buys tickets on the Net, and then decides to surprise his wife by reserving some box seats for Saturday's opera performance and ordering a bouquet of flowers. As Jim was working he switched between Windows Mobile 5 and Tablet XP as he accomplished these tasks. It didn’t matter whether Jim was in Mobile-Mode or Computer-Mode when Jim decided to respond to his golf buddies e-mails, reserve tickets, or order flowers for his wife. It was simply a matter of what work task he was performing when he made the decision to perform these personal tasks on-the-fly. All in a day's work, he thinks to himself, and all of it using his cPC.