Mobility was a big hit with our latest tester, but raised security issues. And while he was excited about trying the BlackBerry Pearl, it was the abilities of FireFox and OpenOffice that really appealed. Rupert White reports


Connectivity anywhere is winning every time with Gazette guinea pigs, but the laptops on offer with 3G built in are too big, it seems. Widescreen machines are not only unwieldy, but they also present a security risk, according to our latest tester.



Gareth Dickson is a solicitor in the litigation department at City firm Ashurst, working mainly on intellectual property (IP) disputes. We gave him a BlackBerry Pearl and an Acer TravelMate with built-in 3G connectivity, both on Vodafone, to see if he would like the experience as much as other testers have.



As a City IP lawyer, Mr Dickson deals with very sensitive information. Obviously, lawyers all over do, too, but it gave him a non-technical reason to caution other users of mobility technologies about how to use them.



'The majority of the work I do is focused on online trademark and copyright infringement. It was in this context that I was particularly keen to review a 3G laptop,' he told us.



'I used the TravelMate on my daily commute into and from Liverpool Street. While there were several things I liked about it from a consumer's point of view, for example the large screen and clear display, I would be hesitant to recommend it for commuting. If anything, the size of the screen encourages rubbernecking, which should be avoided at all costs in our profession. It is also a heavy piece of kit to carry around London's transport system, and it was too big to open the screen fully on some trains.'



This size-and-weight issue should be obvious to laptop makers, but the trend is still for widescreen models. Though widescreen formats help business people watch DVDs, Mr Dickson's experience, and that of Sunita Mason featured two weeks ago, was that big laptops sometimes deny the mobility benefits of built-in total wireless connectivity. Dell, HP and Lenovo (ThinkPad) also make 3G machines, and there are or will be smaller-format options in all four companies' ranges. The Gazette would also firmly back Mr Dickson's comments about screen size being a factor in information security.



In terms of size, solutions to this problem are varied - either buy a small laptop (or what are often called ultra-portables) and a 3G datacard, or the new USB modems from T-Mobile or Vodafone, or plump for a beefed-up Windows Mobile device. But the Gazette IT section is currently salivating over the HTC Shift, due out later this year: this should be a Vista machine with full connectivity in an ultra-mobile PC format, with a keyboard.



As for built-in 3G in general, Mr Dickson was positive. 'It was a real benefit to be able to connect to the Internet while journeying into and home from work. Emails that were too long to be happily composed on a Blackberry could now be written on the train, and in spite of the speed, I could spend my time performing WHOIS searches [into the owners of domain names] and researching cybersquatters.



'But I also thought the 3G connection was quite slow, no matter where I was and regardless of whether I was moving or stationary. This meant opening multiple pages using [open source browser] Firefox's tabs did not save me any time, although using tabs does of course still avoid a cluttered desktop.'



In tests, the Gazette has found that connection speed varies greatly depending on location and speed of travel, as one might expect from a cellular connection, but we have achieved speeds in line with operator claims using this set-up.



Mr Dickson appeared to be one of the few City suits yet to have his work/life balance destroyed by being given a BlackBerry for mobile email. We thought we would fix that by lending him a Pearl. The Gazette likes the Pearl, but then we only want to read emails on it, not write them. He, however, had his high hopes dashed by its limitations.



'I was pretty excited at the thought of getting a Pearl, as were most of those who would listen to me talk about it. My first impressions were positive: it looks good, it's incredibly light, it fits nicely into the palm of your hand, and the trackball eases navigation. But the keypad feels a bit fragile, the battery life was not as good as some other handsets on the market, and the menus lost all aesthetic appeal once you leave the main menu page.



'The screen is perhaps too small to read PDFs or to have any meaningful interaction with Word and Excel documents, but the average user can probably live with that. It does email perfectly well, but then you'd expect that from

a Blackberry.'



Unfortunately, the Pearl did not deliver enough, said Mr Dickson, mainly in having a jack-of-all-trades keyboard solution.



The Gazette has tested a lot of mobility solutions recently, which is why we set Mr Dickson, like Ruth Barber before him (see [2007] Gazette, 17 May, 15), the additional task of using non-Microsoft applications for web browsing and office productivity: Firefox and OpenOffice. We wanted a City lawyer's view on this, and it seems Mr Dickson liked them a lot, and found Firefox particularly useful for an IP lawyer.



'I found Firefox to be perfectly suited for my line of work. While I really like being able to browse using tabs, and I like the smooth interface and sensible layout of the Firefox browser, together with multiple add-ons, such as multiple language support and spell-check.



'In a courtroom, Firefox's contextual colouring of a webpage's HTML source is a great help. It makes my job of explaining how a webpage is doing what it does, as well as demonstrating what the designer intended the page to do, and pointing out the bits of the page that don't affect the display of a page more straightforward. This helps, particularly since few judges might have a working knowledge of HTML or JavaScript. In addition, source print-outs from Firefox allow the printer to display additional page information, such as the date and time of the source, and the title and address of a page. For these reasons alone, going back to Internet Explorer is not an option.'



The open source OpenOffice systems also impressed greatly. 'OpenOffice's suite of document editing software is a superb alternative for the average consumer who does not want to purchase Microsoft Office,' said Mr Dickson.



'Because it is open source, it can be distributed freely under the GNU Lesser General Public License and, in theory at least, can be modified as you please. On the downside, it also means it is supported by forums and message boards rather than helplines or technical officers, but that should really not be an issue for 99% users for 99% of the time.



'As well as being easy to use and able to open and save Microsoft Office documents, it looks good, and the menus are smooth and look professional. It is also very easy to use for databases, so it can be a solution for corporate as well as individual users. It also allows a user to convert a document to PDF without having to purchase Adobe's full Acrobat, and the resultant PDFs have various security, encryption and other options available too, which can be very handy for sending documents out.



'Anyone working with numbers will also be interested to know that tables nested within a text document function just like a spreadsheet, so equations, calculations and formulas can all be edited without having to use a separate spreadsheet. OpenOffice is software for the masses, and you don't need to rely on my word alone for that: Google Docs now supports OpenOffice formats.'



Whether OpenOffice or anything like it ever makes an appearance in a City law firm's offices is up for debate, though it is unlikely to happen any time soon. But we have now got both criminal and City lawyers to see the other side of software, so balance is achieved.



l Gareth Dickson is an intellectual property solicitor at Ashurst, a City law firm with more than 190 partners and 700 lawyers. It has 1,700 staff worldwide.

l The Acer TravelMate 4280 and BlackBerry Pearl were both tested on Vodafone's network.

l Alternative options would be laptops from Lenovo, Dell or HP, with datacards from any operator or 3G USB modems from T-Mobile or Vodafone.

l All prices are available on the business websites of the operators. The Gazette is not paid for reviews, and all equipment is returned.