Business trips often mean taking your work with you and these days it?s the laptop that goes with you. However, with travel the risk of your laptop being stolen or damaged increases. Most often, the files stored on the laptop are vital to the success of the trip. To make sure you have a successful trip even if your laptop is stolen or damaged, you may want to follow these guidelines.
Before you leave for the trip, make sure you have a complete backup of all the information and files on your laptop. A full backup of your data should be the last thing you do before packing the computer into your bag. This backup should stay at home, as it is the crucial fallback when disaster strikes. Don?t let life?s mishaps hamper the progress of your homebased business opportunity. Get some external storage to bring on the trip with you. Make a copy of files that you expect you?ll need on the trip. These could be on a recordable disk or USB thumb drive. This ensures that you have access to these files even if your laptop is stolen or damaged.
It also gives you some flexibility to use another computer at your destination in case you need to. This copy should preferably not go into your laptop bag. If the bag gets stolen, lost or damaged, you need to be able to get access to the files.
You could email critical files to yourself. Using one of the online email services, you can keep a copy of your files online and retrieve them when needed. This could be a real life-saver. Don’t forget your contacts. Synchronize your cell phone or PDA with your computer and export your contact database to a file that can be viewed as plain text. If you need to retrieve any of this information, you do not want to have to import all your contact information into your client’s Outlook just to be able to view it.
If may be a good idea to scan your tickets and other travel documentation and make it part of the backup. Often the originals are kept with your laptop, so if that is stolen, you at least have some proof to fall back on.
Following these guidelines could change a business disaster into a mere inconvenience. It only takes a couple of minutes, but could mean the difference between success and failure when you need to travel for your homebased business opportunity.
Marg Roukens
202-657-5874
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Tri Power Team
