Best of the Bags

It's in the Bag - Which carry-on bag is best? By Seth Stevenson

Samsonite Ultra 3000 XLT Sideroller Carry-On Upright Suiter, $139.99 at Ebags.com.

Nothing flashy here. Completely generic, Samonsite-y looks. Yet it's a great value for its price. In terms of functionality, it's not appreciably different from the high-end bags. The Samsonite features oodles of useful pockets inside and out and is again well-appointed with accessory bags and a tri-fold hanger. The wheels are rollerblade style and feel strong. The main compartments are quite spacious. And here's the kicker: Separate, tiny wheels let you crabwalk the bag sideways, to create a narrower profile when you need to squeeze through a tight space. I tested this out in my simulated airplane aisles and was impressed. I could easily picture the Samsonite slipping untouched through a slalom of obese airline passengers, their fat haunches spilling under armrests and into the aisle. The little sideways wheels aren't all that strong and don't roll as smoothly, but they'll do the trick for that mad jaunt from the jetway to your seat. Granted, if the Victorinox and the Samsonite were the same price, you'd want the Victorinox, but the cost difference is way too much to be overcome. Unless you're talking about a bag like …

Tumi Vestry 22-inch Wheeled Packing Case, $295 at Tumi.com.

In the luggage brand senior yearbook, Tumi was voted "Most likely to be stowed in a Phnom Phen airport locker, bulging with stacks of non-sequential U.S. currency." Tumi designs are always sleek, modern, and just a little bit dangerous. The Vestry model is no exception, with its bold, black, streamlined look. It also excelled at each challenge I set for it. It rolled more smoothly than other bags in the walking-around test; did not leak when subjected to the rainy-day test; fit comfortably into my simulated aisles in the fake-airplane test; and seemed to almost chuckle dryly as, during the butter-knife test, I feebly attempted to injure its thick and muscular hide. You can feel the solidity of the construction—the unbreakable zippers and unbendable handle. With its excellent layout of compartments and pockets—including dedicated shoe slots—the Tumi is delightfully packable. It's lightweight, too.

And so we have a winner. One look at this bag and you'll long to strut confidently through foreign airport terminals, Tumi rolling alongside. A tad expensive? Yes. But remember Eddie Murphy's farsighted wisdom. A bag like this will stay with you for life—and that's exactly what you'll want.

Workaround for XP losing WiFi 802.11b connections

Wired News: Windows XP Bedevils Wi-Fi Users

• Go to Control Panel.
• Choose Administrative Tools.
• Select Services. A two-pane window comes up.
• In the right-hand pane, scroll down and click Wireless Zero Configuration.
• Click Stop the Service. A progress bar may come up briefly.
• Click Start the Service. Again, a progress bar may come up.
• Close the Services window. At this point, Fleishman said, the connection should come back.

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I suspect it's a problem with certain machine/PC card combinations.

Lookout: search Outlook email

Lookout email search for Microsoft Outlook - Lookout Software

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I may REALLY come to like this. It's early to tell and I'm using a beta 1.10 release version. It's only $30, free until release.

Things I like:

1. Very simple, but if you read the manual there's a nice search syntax available.
2. Very, very, fast indexing.
3. Complete control of what gets indexed across multiple PST files. Since I keep very little on the exchange server (makes Palm sync actually work instead of causing endless pain) this was critical to me.

Wow.

Tips on using firewire and USB drives

Panther FireWire Bug (Part 4)

Consider adding a hub, patch-panel, or additional Firewire or USB ports with a PCI card or PC Card, to provide a sacrificial connection. If a port on the hub, patch-panel, or PCI card goes bad, it is relatively simple and low-cost to replace it.

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A very good tip.

ConceptDraw for OS X and Windows: but what's the file format?

ConceptDraw is cross-platform software for creating professional-looking diagrams, flowcharts, orgcharts, schemes, and other technical and business drawing for Macintosh and Windows platforms

Macintouch: ConceptDraw 5.2 is a cross-platform flowchart and diagramming application that includes ConceptDraw Basic (a built-in scripting language). The new version features improved performance and enhanced XML for Visio import, with full support of well-formed Visio XML documents. ConceptDraw Standard is $149 (Professional $249) for Mac OS X 10.1.5 and up and Windows.

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Good import/export, but what the HECK is the native file format? It kills me that vendors don't tell us on page one if they have YAFF (yet another file format) or if they use something interesting (PDF, SVG, etc).

At last - a review of USB "thumb" drives

Ars Technica: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed drive review - Page 1 - (6/2003)

Reading this review, and thinking about how it's written, it's easy to understand why PC Magazine has a "wasting disease".

Of course, as always, nothing's designed for my needs. I'd like:

1. A place to write my name on the drive case so when people pass it around it gets back to me.
2. When one removes the cap, a way to quickly clip it to the base with a slender line so it doesn't get lost, but doesn't block things. The biggest pain with these devices is losing the cap.

SplashPhoto - Mobile Image Viewer for the Palm OS

SplashPhoto - Mobile Image Viewer for the Palm OS

The desktop client runs on OS X and Windows. I'm going to try this with my CLIE, I wasn't impressed with what came with the TJ-27.

Update: Looks very good. It also looks a heck of a lot like the Tungsten E photo app. I suspect PalmOne licensed a simplified version of SplashPhoto. I'll probably buy this one.