MAN VS TECH
Can your average office bod really get on with stuff anywhere? We insert our T3 specimen into a variety of hostile and distracting conditions, armed with tech, to find out
Can you really work wherever you like? We head to the most remote location possible in search of a Wi- Fi signal to find out if you can
WITH MY NOISE CANCELLATION ON, THE ROAD IS BARELY A WHISPER, EVEN AS THE WINDY BLASTS FROM TRUCKS NEARLY BOWL ME OVER
Donald Trump’s screw-loose tweets… other stuff on the internet… other people saying stuff all the time. The modern world fires a Gatling gun of distractions at us 24/7, pushing our already short-lived attention spans. It’s a wonder I can even finish this sen…
Where was I? Anyway. It’s hard enough for the lowly scribe to get an honest day’s work done as it is, what with all these distractions, but what if I were dumped in scenarios where it was even harder to work than normal, due to distraction or remoteness? Could super-smart tech save the day and aid a fruitful spell of truth-polishing, despite the odds?
I like T3’ s Editor. And I thought he liked me. But then he dumps me in the middle of ruddy muddy nowhere. The raw wilderness. The raging wilds. Well, some remote and muddy woodlands anyway. There are hungry-looking squirrels about. Probably bears, too. And the clouds above are pregnant with rain. Plus, normally, muddy green places mean the very worst kind of horrors: unreliable internet.
Luckily I’ve got a pop-up tent to keep the wet stuff off (it looks squirrel-resistant too), and T3 has kindly provided a chair (MP Essentials Travel Sports Directors Chair – £39.99 from amazon.co.uk). Sure, there’s not enough space to swing an angry squirrel in here, but I’m dry and can happily peck away at my keyboard.
Talking of which, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is perfectly portable at just 1.37kg and has all-day battery life, but the juice will empty eventually. However, I also have a Mophie battery pack with high-power USB-C port, capable of charging the MacBook Pro and extending its life by a whopping 14 hours, should I not be rescued from this muddy hellhole in time.
Into the woods
In the meantime, for research and to keep up with depressing tweets, I need the internet. Rather than faffing with semi-satisfactory hotspots and cumbersome cables, the iPhone X provides the laptop with easy wireless tethering. I’m pleasantly surprised to have enough signal to ping off some emails and work about as fast as I normally would in an office. (You don’t need an iPhone for this, but with the two Apple devices signed into iCloud, you don’t need passwords.)
If I temper my temptation to Google ‘hungry squirrel eats man,’ I can work here unaided. In fact as I have no office colleagues to pester me, I’m more efficient, plus the faster I type the warmer I am. The lack of teamaking facilities is an issue, but a few more hours and desperation will make those nearby brown puddles seem perfectly palatable (and will taste just as good as the T3 Editor’s cuppas).
So a win for tech. On to scenario two and I find myself abandoned beside a busy dual carriageway. There’s not an aggressive squirrel in sight, but there’s lots of aggressive, noisy traffic. However with my Bose earphones’ noise cancellation on and some T’Pau at high volume, the road is barely a whisper, even as the windy blasts from trucks nearly bowl me over. The T3 Editor calls. I answer the third time. But though I can hear him, my mic is buffeted by the winds and the general combustion-engine cacophony around me. Shame.
However, what with me having no roof, the elements could be a problem again. I do however have a nifty little laptop tent, much smaller than the full cover of the other tent, but it shelters my all-important MacBook Pro from both rain and deceptively disruptive sunshine, which can render a screen unseeable. I’ve no excuses, sadly, but to get on with some good oldfashioned twee… er, work. Even if I get a few tooting horns passing by and an indecipherable, not wholly supportive, comment from a passerby. I feel less comfortable about being here all day, but it’s another clear win for top tech. Now for the ultimate challenge: working around raccoons.
T3 wanted to put me in the most distracting environment they could think of, which was a monkey house at Bristol Zoo. Sadly, the zoo bods wouldn’t let us in there because
IT’S NOT LONG BEFORE THE RACCOONS GET THEIR FAMOUSLY DEXTROUS PAWS ON MY LAPTOP. THEY’RE EVEN TYPING!
monkeys might pull my ears off. But they thought racoons would be the right balance of inquisitive and ‘non-lethal’. (I belatedly realise that non-lethal isn’t the same as harmless.)
These giant rat-cats with bandit masks made me nervous. Raccoons, the internet tells me, are noted for their very dextrous front paws and intelligence, with studies showing they’re able to remember the solution to tasks for up to three years. So they’re brighter than me, too.
I gingerly enter the raccoon cage. There are two of the badger-sized hairy critters scurrying around. They’re cute, but also, well, badger-sized.
I sit on a tree stump, flip open my laptop and attempt to work. I start to answer an email from T3’ s Editor (about whether I’ve remembered today’s my date with a cage and some raccoons – yes, thanks for that). So far, physically it’s fine to work, as long as mentally I’m okay with it all. I’m getting there. furry friends
Then the raccoon keeper, making her partisanship in the great tech versus wildlife debate clear, deliberately sprinkles carrot and lettuce over me. Those rascally raccoons are rather more interested in me know.
It’s not long before they’re pawing their muddy mitts at my best clean jeans. They have their famously dextrous paws on my lap, my laptop… they’re even typing! Quicker than I can! They even typed that bit!
I try to keep my mind on my work. I need to call the T3 Editor (and ask for a pay rise), but I’m pretty sure the raccoons will nick anything I show an interest in. My laptop battery’s running low, but I can’t risk plugging it into the battery charger and adding an easy-to-yank cable into the equation.
Then Rocky jumps up onto the stump with me. He’s nice, really. Like my cat, only four times the size. It’s okay for a while. Then Rocky clearly sends some kind of signal about how bad my spelling is to his pal Meiko, and she’s keen for chortles, so claws at my laptop from the other side, almost knocking it straight off my lap.
There is – to use a line I’ve long fantasised about using – absolutely no way I can work in these conditions. I’m outta here.
You can only take so much While the MacBook Pro’s metal and glass exterior stood up to their claws, no amount of noise cancellation or sun-shielding can help you work when the things you need in order to work are being actively knocked out of your hand. It’s fair to say, wildlife is what beat tech in this encounter.
What have we learned from this cruel experiment on me? What proved encouraging was that everything worked as expected, some things better than, and everything fit in one backpack, with the exception of the larger tent (which folds down, just not that small) and the chair (same, being a whole chair). It was a genuine, versatile remote work setup.
This top tech can prevent distractions and aid stellar journalism (or at least some copy and pasting from Wikipedia) in several testing environments. Less so, though, when hungry raccoons are on the prowl and you’ve got lettuce in your hair.