I do most of my Technologizer work these days on a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop that runs three operating systems (OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) and a full complement of applications for wrangling words, pictures, and Web sites (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, and whatever else I need at any given moment). It’s a great tool for the job.
But tomorrow I’m going to set it aside for a few days and launch what I’m calling Operation Foxbook–an experiment that involves doing as much of my work on the Web and inside the browser (a specific browser–Firefox) as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to try this for a while–I wrote about the idea of a “Firefox PC” back in this post. But when I was at PC World, I couldn’t truly go cold turkey from desktop software, since we used Adobe InDesign, a decidedly local application, to crank out the magazine.
Technologizer, however, is all Web all the time–and I know of nothing I do for the site that simply can’t be done with a Web app. And the notion of computers that serve largely as containers for a Web browser has hit the big time–there’s a whole class of inexpensive, small notebook known as netbooks. So I’ll use one such machine, HP’s Mini-Note, to do my Technologizer stuff, and will blog about the experience. I know some of the browser-based apps I’ll use: parts of both Google Docs and Zoho, for sure, and the excellent Picnik photo editor. And Gmail, too, even though I continue to both love it and hate it. I’m sure I’ll need to seek out other apps as I need them, too.
Stay tuned–I may need your advice and patience to get through to the weekend without grabbing the MacBook…
