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Back by popular demand! The 2010 Bogger Open Sponsored by Northern Collaborative Technologies & IdoNotes Check our this years Blogger Open Site which is now live.  Registration will officially open this Friday January 8th.  Follow BloggerOpen on Twitter for all the latest news. Make sure to give a special thanks to this years sponsors Big thanks to Mike McGarel for his efforts in redesigning the Blogger Open Site this year

One of the biggest challenges for me the last couple of years is lugging my laptop around.  My everyday machine is a Lenovo T400, which serves me well, but with a 9 Cell battery weighs in at 5lb 10oz, and takes up a fair amount of space in the back pack.

I mainly use my laptop at Lotusphere for blogging, and since I am using the Notes based BlogSphere template for this blog, my blogging client is Lotus notes. This year I will be leaving the T400 home and instead bringing the new Lenovo S10 Netbook that arrived a couple of days ago.

Weighing in at 2 lbs 4 oz, and small it will be a lot lighter and take up much less space in my backpack. I have been playing with it for a couple of days now, and it would appear to be more then adequate for my on the go computing needs, with 2 GB of RAM Notes 8.5.1 is running fine, and if squeezed for memory I can always revert to the standard configuration.

The biggest adjustment for me so far is getting used to the Trackpad, I have never been a fan of the Trackpad, but short of attaching an external mouse that is the only option on the S10, so I am slowly asjusting to being a Trackpad user.  One of the things about the Trackpad is that it is like a Bluetooth headset.  The headsets come with one or two buttons which if you can remember all the varieties of push sequences actually do quite a bit, but I can never remember the sequences so I don’t use them.

Here is a video I found showing a number of the possibilities with the Touchpad, but am I really going to remember them all, I don’t think so.

Another nice feature is the integrated webcam, which can also be used to optically log on to Windows, instead of typing a password.  On my T400 I use the Fingerprint reader which is a little faster then the optical scan, but it works. One of the more interesting features is the Quick Start mode, which is a stripped down Linux OS which boots almost instantaneously, and provides access to a Web Browser, Skype, Photos and Music (with access to the hard drive), and a Chat client , they appear to be using Splashtop to run this.  Here is their demo.

I don’t think this would ever become my primary machine, but it will be a real nice option for traveling, and especially for making Lotusphere a little easier for me to get around this year.

I have thinking quite a bit about Lotusphere, this years will be the sixth one that I am attending.  What a big difference from back in 2005 when I arrived for the first time at Lotusphere (more then a day late, thanks to a snow storm blanketing the northeast of the United states, causing me to miss the OGS and guest speaker Ray Ozzie) barely knowing a person there.  Being January 2005 it was before Twitter, and Facebook, and I can only think of a couple of handful of people who were blogging at that point. Fast forward now to Lotusphere 2010, and oh how the world has changed.  For me personally when I arrive at Lotusphere it is not worrying about will I know anyone, the bigger concern is will I find the time to say hello, and catch up in person with everyone I want to.

So back to the title of the post A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, many of us going to Lotusphere while we might only see each other once or twice a year, we are connected through out the year via Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Bleedyellow, and more.  As I have been talking to people over the last few weeks, or simply browsing through the twitter stream one thing I noticed is that many people tend to express their personalities with an avatar or cartoon as opposed to a picture of themselves.  While my Twitter picture has been pretty consistent for example here are a few images that have been my Facebook profile pictures

While they all reflected me quite well, they won’t help you recognize me if you see me in person.  I am going to change this back to a current photo of me at least until after Lotusphere. If you aren’t using a current picture please consider adding one at least for the next few weeks, if we haven’t met before, or haven’t seen each other in a year it will really help us find each other and connect during Lotusphere.

Sponsoring Tri State LUG wasn’t enough for my friends at GSX.

Join us for a demo of any GSX product and enter to win one of two fully paid packages to either Lotusphere 2010 or WES 2010. Everyone’s complaining about the economy still being down and traveling budget being squeezed. Well GSX decided to do something about it Schedule a one-hour one-on-one demo with our US GSX Team between November 15th and December 15th 2009 and automatically enter to win one of two fully paid tradeshow packages to the show of your choice    Lotusphere 2010    WES 2010 There are no strings attached. After Dec 15th, we will choose and announce two lucky winners and pay for their airfare within the continental US and Canada, Hotel and Tradeshow entrance fee of their choice. Contact your GSX team today and mention the PROMO2010 contest.

So head on over to GSX and schedule a demo of one of their fantastic products, who knows you could be the lucky winner! 2009 GSX Contest Free Tradeshow package