I recently got an iPhone which starts to eliminate the need for me to carry around a laptop, but more on that later. I love my Macbook and OS X in general, but lugging seven pounds of laptop around with me for little gain is more pain than it’s worth. I’ve been living a daydream of writing on the train for several years, but it’s rarely come to fruition. There’s two main reasons for this: I tend to fall asleep on the train ride in more often than not, and the train ride home is often too crowded to break out the laptop.
So, I’ve been hauling around this dead weight for the times I feel like writing at lunch. I’m starting to think that web-based tools will work just as well for most of the stuff I’m working. The advantages are pretty obvious: At work and home, I’m connected to the Internet so therefore I have access to my stuff. The MBTA is in the process of rolling out WiFi onto the trains–I guess they figure since the trains are always late, maybe we can get some work done on them–so once that happens, if the stars align and I feel like writing I can still get to my docs.
The downsides are also pretty obvious, in that I need to be connected to the Internet. I’m not sure how time-sensitive the stuff I’ll be working on is, though. Google Docs is pretty good but it lacks proper formatting. Anything for school, where I’m adhering to academic standards will need to be done in Word.
I’m going to be giving ScriptFrenzy a try — the NaNoWriMo of Scripts, where you have a month to do 100 pages. Scripped.com has a nice little on-line script tool, but I’m a little suspect of its apparent PDF only export.
I’ll let you know how I make out.
Mark Crump 