If you are a road warrior carrying luggage packed with lithium batteries on flights in the United States, you will want to read about the battery restrictions taking effect on January 1, 2008. You will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in your checked luggage and any batteries you carry on must be in a device or contained in a plastic bag. The press release has some of the rules and a colleague pointed me to the U.S. Department of Transportation web site with the detailed rules.
I have finally found a solution to a road-warrior dilemma that I have had for a long time: what do I do when I need more power outlets than are available in my hotel or conference room? I had thought about dragging along a standard power strip. They have plenty of outlets, but are heavy and bulky. Another alternative was a multi-outlet adapter, but they can have a hard time fitting into those pop-up outlets built into modern conference tables.
A colleague recently pointed me to a solution: Monster Cable Outlets to Go. Tim over at Practical Travel Gear also has a nice review. An Outlets to Go has all of the flexibility of a power strip without the bulky size and weight. The outlets are spaced far enough apart to easily fit the wall-wart chargers I have to carry. Each model comes with a short cord with a three-pronged wall plug that conveniently stows in one of the outlets. There are three, four and six-port models available. The four and six-port models include a circuit breaker. Although the packaging claims that the three-port model includes a circuit breaker, I confirmed with Monster’s technical support that it does not. Another handy feature is the light-up plug, which tells you if you have plugged into a live wall outlet.
I picked up the three-port model from Amazon. I haven’t had to travel with it yet, but I’ve already found it handy to have at home when I temporarily needed three outlets but only had two available. That event alone was enough to justify a permanent space in my laptop bag.
My father recently purchased a Vupoint Solutions FS-V1-VP slide and film scanner. He dutifully read the instructions, installed the latest driver and plugged it into a USB 1.1 port. The computer never detected the device. He exchanged the scanner and had the same result.
An email to Vupoint’s tech support revealed the solution: a USB 2.0 port was required. Even though a USB 2.0 device should be compatible with a slower USB 1.1 port, the scanner was not! We installed a USB 2.0 PCI card plugged in the scanner and the computer detected it right away.
The lesson learned from this adventure: never assume a USB 2.0 device is compatible with USB 1.1.
Update December 27, 2007: Further testing has revealed that the computer will not detect the scanner when it is plugged into a USB hub. The scanner must be plugged directly into a USB 2.0 port on the computer.
Are you looking to do web hosting on the cheap (or even free)? Lifehacker has a great summary of free services you can use with your domain name. I happen to have started using Google Apps last week to host my domain name’s email. Setting it up was a breeze. So far it has performed well and I can’t argue with the price!
Links | Michael W. Lind | 
December 29, 2007 8:09 AM | 
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