Mobile technology – are you making the connection?

As the legal world starts returning to work after the summer vacation period, how many of you have had the experience of taking a laptop or PDA (personal digital assistant) on holiday with you, or even on a business trip - 'so the office could keep in touch with you' - only to discover it was not so simple as you had imagined?

Perhaps there were problems with getting an outside line for a data call from your hotel room. Or you discovered that the cable you had brought with your computer did not fit into the telecoms socket the hotel provided. Or it was difficult to get your computer to talk to the wireless network you thought you could access in that cafe boasting a 'wi-fi' hotspot.


If this has been your experience - and particularly if your firm does not employ its own IT staff - then it might be worth investing £15.99 on a copy of a new book titled The Mobile Technology Manual. The book has been written for the estimated 530,000 people in the UK who now use PDAs and sets out to explain the various mobile technologies available - how to know your GPRS from your G3; the respective merits of laptops versus PDAs; and how to locate and safely use wireless hotspots.


The book also looks at some of the security issues surrounding the use of mobile technology. While the danger of unencrypted wireless messages being intercepted by rogue or innocent third parties has been well reported in the press, you also need to be aware of the more mundane risks. These include someone pinching your laptop as your luggage goes through an airport's security scanners or someone stealing your laptop or PDA while you are looking elsewhere in a crowded coffee shop.


My tip would be to try a BlackBerry, for the following reasons: they are cheap, they are portable, they can double as a mobile telephone, they have a good battery life, they are based on GPRS wireless technology, so you do not have to worry about finding a suitable phone socket, and they are perfect for accessing e-mail.


But do not follow the example of one law partner I know, who proudly told me that he had rigged up a way of mounting his BlackBerry in the middle of his car steering wheel, so he could check his e-mails while he was on the move.