OTHER TECH

Working Wirelessly

One of the first benefits Drew experienced was in his work. While he knew how to u se a laptop, he still wrote out landscape proposals. But with his new digital camera, he now takes before-and-after pictures of jobs and then organizes them on the Dell notebook PC by various themes. At the same time, he uses the Samsung cellphone/pocket PC to download client files from the office, which help him prepare the proposal.

Now when he goes to see a client, he can use the Dell PC to show them a slideshow of how a similar project developed. "Before I was organized, I'd try to find a picture to present to a client, and then get embarrassed when I couldn't. Now I can immediately find any element and quickly get their reaction to my ideas." Thanks to the new gear, proposals that used to take him 2 1/2 weeks to prepare are finished in a day. In his home office, Drew transfers photos from a digital camera to create slideshows for his landscaping clients.

Drew loves to have several things going on at once. "I function well with distractions," he said. So while preparing his proposals, he often listens to Real's music-subscription service, Rhapsody, streaming it wirelessly into his office from the upstairs Niveus Media Center PC. He also uses Microsoft's Media Center Edition software and his laptop's video tuner card to watch TV. "Rhapsody lets me edit out the music I don't like," he said. "And with the TV software in my laptop, I can see thumbnails of all available channels and pick the one I want."