How to be more productive with laptop?

0. How to be more productive with laptop?

1. Of the below, which have you tried and how helpful were they?

a. External monitor in dorm room for more screen space?

b. Swivel convertible vs yoga style convertible? Swivel seems better to me I don't see why you would get a yoga over a swivel.

c. How good is wacom for say writing answers to a worksheet? Do you still end up printing powerpoints and pdfs even with a wacom pen?

d. 5 hours vs 7 hours vs 9 hour laptop battery?

I have thought about convertibles for a while haven't owned oen before but in my mind the best thing is that I can store all of my notes, pdfs, powerpoints in one place and theoretically not have to print any of them. For students/teachers out there how true has that been for you? In practice does a convertible tablet with a wacom pen make you more productive for work?

 

it depends on your workflow and what you do, everyone will be a bit different. for me personally I have tried all of the above you posted.

a - works good, when im at home or the office I am docked to 2 or 4 external monitors ( Video editing )
b - I prefer the swivel system and to this day the Toughbook CF-19 is a favorite
c - works very well, caveat is it depends on your software you use. some software is glitchy with pen input and this will be trial and error ( I run Cintiques )
d - depends on what you are doing.... if I am on one of my high speed workstations I can complete as much in 3 hours compared to the 7-15 hours it would take on other systems. I will add in though now I have found out about them external batteries that mount to some systems are very handy as well as well as the benefits of a long battery life companion system (Lenovo X230 for a bit of editing, ASUS T100 for notes, web and manuals )

if you are just talking about notes and PDF's etc I actually find true dockable tablet like the ASUS T100 makes a fantastic note taker / tablet / reader and companion to a full fledged laptop or desktop.

for photo and video editing it is almost a necessity, however I do find that voice dictation via Dragon Dictate etc also tends to be a very handy tool in my on the go arsenal.

I answered this last because it is the most variable, how much more productive compared to what?

when I haul around my loaded M6700 around the house I am 4x more productive then when sitting infront of my Mac Pro for editing and doing medium rendering. but only 1/8 as productive if im comparing rendering to my server.

the laptop allows me to work on the road and do edits at client sites, that makes me more productive in that aspect BUT on the flip side if I spend too much time away from the power gear it can slow my productivity because my base stations are so much faster.

you just asked the almost impossible question and every single person and answer will be different

 

a. It depends on your workload. If you tend to have two documents open at the same time and you are working on both, then it is helpful. Or if you need a big display of information to look at while working on another document. But it is not a huge deal unless your notebook display is small. External monitors are inexpensive, so I say try it. They last for years and work with many different laptops.
c. I have a wacom. For photo editing it is good. If you are doing it professionally, then look into one. But I would not use one for forms. My handwritting is bad. Better to type in answers.
d. Battery life is nice. I find with two hours I am clock watching. But with say four or more hours I am not so worried. But it depends on your usage. Remember, it doesn't need to last all day, just as long as you will use it mobile. My battery lasted eight hours, but I never really needed that long. It was nice though.

As for notes, well I also have a tablet. I don't like the tablet onscreen keyboard, nor did I like using a computer keyboard for notes. I prefer hand written notes. But that is just me.

 

As KCETech says, everyone will have different answers to these questions, but I'll give mine too!

a. The Most Helpful Thing. I can always use a secondary monitor for just about every productivity task.

b. Having a drawing surface can be helpful even if you are not drawing, but the type of hinge is really irrelevant to productivity. Even if one is more productive than the other, the difference is probably negligible.

c. Your whole economy needs to be paperless for this to be helpful... if the end form of your worksheet needs to be paper anyway, then you will end up printing it anyway...

d. Going from 5 to 7 definitely helped more than going from 7 to 9.

 

Stay off of Facebook and other sites you waste a lot of time on

But seriously, personally I didn't find much use of an external monitor for my personal usage (might be different for you); I'd sometimes connect my laptop to my TV (eh, same difference), but I never saw use in using it for work purposes (I just played movies and such on the TV instead). Having a convertible laptop with some sort of stylus would be much more productive than just a convertible touchscreen laptop, if you plan on taking handwritten notes on it, drawing, etc. Non-stylus touchscreen laptops are just a gimmick imo. As for how good a Wacom stylus is for writing answers on a worksheet, it's about as good as you using your pen/hand to write answers on a worksheet. Printing is an entirely different issue though; I don't really see how it's relevant to Wacom laptop / non-Wacom laptop. If you are required to print something, it doesn't matter what tools you used to create the data as in the end, it'd have to be printed anyway. As for my personal use, I've never had a situation where I had to print our my notes and such, since most everything I do is digital anyway.