The Goal: Finding hardware and software that will allow MS Word editing on a main PC and a portable PC and synchronizing edits on both.

What has been a bit of a struggle has been preparing to send my daughter off to college. I want to set her up with a dorm-appropriate computer and a portable solution for on the go note taking and word processing as well as internet connectivity, etc. My thought was a smallish laptop would be great to shoot off to the library, but not as effective for dorm room schoolwork. The solution for her, will also potentially be of interest to us working class drones who want to do some work at the office and not lug a large laptop home or to lunch to finish a project or letter.

I have been looking at hardware that I wouldn’t normally look at. Small desktops, laptops and slate / tablet types of computers. What I have found was a potential solution and a few mouth watering hardware options, one of which I might just buy if for no other reason other than to play with.

What I have decided was the best solution for now is a 17 inch laptop that I expect will get nothing but dorm room activity and the very occasional mobile use due to it’s size. In the interim, I have purchased a software package available for the iPad called Documents To Go ( D2G )

Documents to go is produced by a company called DataViz. They have been around for a while and while I haven’t used their software for anything more than a test of the Microsoft Word compatible portion of their package, they apparently can edit and create Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF files. The juicy detail that isn’t immediately apparent when doing a search for word processing software like this is how the heck do you easily get your document to and from the tablet/portable device into your larger computer for final touches, printing, etc.

One solution that is easy to grasp is using the email function of your portable to send the document to your computer, then of course you could send it back for additional mobile editing. What a pain, and how about the confusion if you open an older copy of the document and replace your more current version. Not a very handy solution if you need to pass the data back and forth more than a time or two. How about if you forget to email it period? How about you email it to your portable device, then find yourself somewhere else without access to your portable, but access to the internet on a library or friend’s computer? Using email to send back and forth doesn’t seem like a very flexible or elegant solution either.

To cut to the chase, I found a website that distributes a product/service called DropBox. Dropbox is a free service that allows you to setup a folder on your computer. Anything you save to or put in that folder will be available to you on the web, or on any other computer you setup to use with Dropbox, or and this is the big deal, on your iPad in the Documents to Go program. If you are interested in a free Dropbox Account, click HERE. IF you follow that link, Both you and I will be rewarded with an extra 250 MB of cloud storage over the 2GB free that you get with a regular account!

So how does it work for the mobile student? He or she will start a document on their iPad using Documents To Go. Either a Word, Excel, PDF or Powerpoint. After editing, saving the document in D2G in the dropbox folder on the iPad will cause the data to sync with the D2G server on the web, which will later be placed into whatever other computers that have been setup with the D2G client folders. The document can then be edited on that computer, then saved, where it will be available to the others again. Obviously the synch cannot occur when the computers in question are not able to reach the internet.

So how does the D2G work on an iPad for word processing? Fine if you like to touch type on glass. I would suggest a bluetooth keyboard and use that when needed for mobile computing. Not fun to carry the iPad AND a keyboard, but far better and lighter than using a laptop on the run.

I mentioned above some new hardware that got my interest piqued. What was it? Two products by ASUS. The first I actually played with in a Microsoft store a few weeks ago. It is the Asus Slate. The slate is a Win7 Tablet with awe inspiring specifications, particularly a fantastic pen capability combined with Microsoft OneNote to be the ultimate in taking digital notes. Battery life and heft are an issue, but remember this is a full powered computer, besting the specs of many laptops. The ASUS Slate comes with a bluetooth keyboard and carrying folio. Check it out if you can find one. The link to the page on Amazon will probably show the unit being out of stock. Asus seems capable of designing but not bringing to market these products. The other ASUS product is tending more towards the iPad end of things and is the ASUS EEE Transformer. The EEE Transformer is a tablet with Honeycomb OS and a detachable keyboard that when in place makes the device appear similar to a small laptop – albeit one with 16 hours of battery life! Unless the people at Apple are idiots, this is what the iPad 3 will look like.

With these two products, I am certain the Asus Slate will be the best at MS Word, Excel, etc,. compatibility. Why… Because it will run those programs directly. A dropbox on the slate will provide for near seamless use of files across multiple computers. Also, both the slate and deskop running MS software will allow the use of the Microsoft Cloud, known as sky drive, a competitor to the Dropbox utility.

Asus Transformer Video Review from Anantech.com