Enjoy the ride.

[Text by Jason Fitzpatrick]

Despite the proliferation of laptops and netbooks, the vast majority of students still use their computers like $500 typewriters. Stop working so hard and be a better student by leveraging some clever computer tools to your advantage.

Every semester I get a new wave of college freshman into my classroom, most of them armed with laptops. For the last several semesters, I have been informally tracking how they use their computers. I always assumed that my students were using their computers to their full potential to help them with school, research, and such, but almost all of them were simply using their laptops as extremely expensive typewriters and instant-messaging terminals.

What good is all the computing power of the pre-1960s world sitting on your lap if you’re not using it to make college life easier? The following is a guide for students everywhere that want to spend less time on the tedious stuff, and more time on the things like study and research that actually produce results.

Never Do Anything Yourself That Your Computer Can Do For You

Never, ever, do something the hard way without checking to see if any easy way exists. Applications come in every shape and form to automate tasks on the computer. Never undertake a tedious task on your computer without first visiting a search engine and searching for a method of automating it. Whether you’re resizing photos for a class project, renaming files, or crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, check for the simple—and automatic!—way first. Photo by striatic.

File Renamers: Renaming tons of files has to be one of the most boring and grinding tasks you can undertake. Never waste time renaming files. If you’re on a PC, check out the powerful Bulk Rename Utility for a dashboard of options and the less-overwhelming but still effective Ken Rename. If you’re on a Mac, you can download specialty apps like File List, but it pays to become acquainted with Automator, which can do so much more than simple file renaming.

Text Replacement: Unless you’re writing the next great American novel, chances are you type a fair number of things with a high degree of frequency. Your email address, common phrases you use, formatting you find yourself typing over and over again when working on papers or taking notes, and so on, it might not seem like much but you can easily save hours over the course of a semester by using text replacement. How does text replacement work? Each text replacement tool handles things a little bit differently, but nearly all of them have two basic methods: instant replacement and hot keys.

With replacement, you tell your computer to replace every instance of a string with another string—like notes1 becomes your favorite bullet-list format for taking notes, or mymail becomes your full email address.

Hot keys allow you to assign a phrase to a bit of shorthand plus a hotkey. For example, I have a phrase that is XXX+TAB. Typing it takes only four key strokes but it types out a phrase that would require 53 keystrokes if I typed it manually.

If you’re on a PC, you can try out our home-grown text replacement tool Texter, or other capable tools like Phrase Express. Mac users should check out TextExpander or become more familiar with the built in text-replacement tools in Snow Leopard, and Linux users can give AutoKey a whirl.

Regardless of what you’re trying to do, you’ll almost always be able to find a tool online to automate or at least make that task easier. Get in the habit of always asking yourself, no matter what the task, “Could the computer do this faster and with less input from me?”. Over time you’ll build up a set of tools for quickly completing common tasks.

Keyboard shortcuts

Learn the keyboard shortcuts for everything: your word processor, your note-taking tools, your email client. Slinging the mouse around for tasks that can be accomplished with a keystroke or two is a really inefficient way to work, and far less comfortable. If you’re furiously taking down notes in class do you really want to break your stride to dig around in the toolbar or menus for something like a bullet point activation? You can find shortcut lists for every operating system and application under the sun; hit up Google with a search query like “myapplication shortcut list” to find more shortcuts than you knew existed. Photo by John A. Ward.

Take Better Notes

Note taking is an art form, and it is most definitely not simply writing down everything your professor says or that is in bold print in your textbook. How you take notes is a highly personal thing and heavily influenced by your learning style, but everyone can stand to improve their note taking with a tip or two. Photo by D’Arcy Norman.

Study Note-Taking Techniques: We’ve shared tips with you on how to take more effective notes and how to utilize different note-taking styles and you’ll find no shortage of resources elsewhere on the web for being a more effective note-taker. You can further hone your note-taking skills by researching subject-specific note taking techniques—how you take notes in Medieval Literature won’t be the same way you take notes in Organic Chemistry.

Ditch the Pen:

People who love to take handwritten notes love to take handwritten notes, and we don’t expect to dissuade the everything-looks-better-on-a-Moleskin crowd from abandoning their pens. For the rest of you, taking paper notes is, quite literally, so last century. It’s 2010, and there is no reason for you not to have dynamic, media-rich, cross-indexed, and always available notes. At the end of the semester, do you really want to pick through a hundred pages of hand written notes looking for specific bits of information? No, you don’t. You want to be able to search through your notes quickly and efficiently the same way you use major search engines like Google.

Two extremely popular note-taking tools are Microsoft OneNote and Evernote—so popular, in fact, we faced them off in a reader poll last year. The awesome features of the two applications are beyond the scope of a paragraph, but suffice to say they both have excellent systems for searching (with handwriting recognition!), organizing, and accessing your notes—I use OneNote for everything from graduate school to teaching to writing for Lifehacker. You can check out our overview of OneNote here and Evernote here.

Use the Computer to Network

We’re not talking about Facebook-ing everyone in your class. We’re talking about actively using online study and collaboration tools to interact with your classmates. Sharing notes, discussing assignments and class topics, and collaborating on group projects are but a few of the ways you can take advantage of the hyper-connectivity the information age has brought about. Photo by krossbow.

Share Your Notes:The first objection I usually hear to the idea of sharing notes is that people don’t want to share their hard work and they don’t think that other people should benefit from it. Fair enough, how you deal with who participates in your class-centered groups and note sharing sessions is your business but as an instructor I can tell you this: the kind of person who doesn’t bother to take their own notes isn’t exactly the kind of person you’re going to have to fight for the top grade in the class.

You can share notes and collaborate in quite a few ways but it would help your cause to stick with methods that have a low barrier to entry—most people don’t want to sign up for a bunch of services just for a class. Google Notebook and Documents are great tools since having a Gmail account is nearly universal. You could also set up your own wiki with free tools like Luminotes or customize MediaWiki into your own personal collaboration server.

Build a Contact Web: Whether it’s a group on Facebook, an email list, or a list of phone numbers for text messaging, it’s wise to create a way you can quickly communicate with other students. Many times you have a question about an assignment, something that happened in class, or what you missed when you were absent and sending out an email to your fellow students will result in a faster response than waiting to hear back from the professor. It also helps you build a contact list of your peers—not as important in a freshman Psychology 110 course, but by the time you’re in at the end of your schooling you’ll be taking more focused classes and meeting people in your career path you’ll want to stay in contact with.

Backup, Backup, Backup

You have no excuse for not backing up your data—none. The number and methods for backing up data, especially the small volume that constitutes text-based research and class notes, are so numerous that there simply is no excuse for doing something foolish like keeping all your hard work on a single hard disk or flash drive. Photo by Jeff Wilcox.

Dropbox: It’s free, the basic account can more than hold a semester’s worth of work—short of a film school project—and it syncs to all your computers and to the web. “I accidentally deleted my homework” wasn’t a very good excuse ten years ago and it’s an unforgivable one now. You can sync your passwords, your OneNote notebooks, and access your favorite portable apps from anywhere.

Online Backup: While Dropbox is great for syncing files, if you want to go all out you’ll definitely want to check out some full-fledged computer backup tools like Mozy and Carbonite. Check out our Hive Five on best Windows backup tools to get more information.

In my world, advertisers, software developers and programmers, PR consultants, lawyers, journalists, salesmen, photographers, analysts, and all those people who can work from anywhere just as much as their office, will use one day (if this has not be done yet) at least one of those technologies or their upgraded versions, to do their job. Once you’ll have managed to convince your boss that working from home is good for you, your productivity and his shareholders, then take a moment to review those 10 useful tips that will make your home working experience, unforgettable!

10 useful tools to help you work remotely

• Access your home PC/Mac from anywhere in the World: LogMeIn is a free software which runs on PCs and Macs, and which gives you a fast, easy remote access to the full content of your home or office PC from any other computer with an Internet connection. And if you’re not fan of spending your time manually synchronizing your important files between your home PC, office PC and laptop, then Dropbox is for you. Dropbox is a storage application and service that enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. And since Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Linux for x86 and x86_64, Mac, Windows and the iPhone) users are enabled to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users’ other computers with the Dropbox client! Easy, no??

• Keep your laptop on a USB key: PortableApps.com Suite™ is a complete collection of more than 80 portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go. read the full review.

• Stay organized and learn how to better manage your time and improve your time management experience (”How to find time for…  everything!”).

• Work from a laptop connected in 3G: no need for a 3G dongle and an expensive broadband mobile package to surf the web at high speed and from any place covered by a cellular network.  JoikuSpot Light is a free symbian software that turns any mobile phone with a wifi connection, to a 3G WLAN HotSpot. You can thus connect your laptop or any other WLAN device to the web from anywhere using your mobile phone and enjoy 3G speed surfing! read the full review.

• Keep in touch with the world by VoIP: in the middle of a conference call you will really have a bad excuse if you tell your client or your co-workers that you have to hang-up the phone because in this era of economic downturn it costs you an arm and a leg to call from home! Smile: you’ve got the choice between Skype and Google Voice. And make sure to always keep a VoIP client installed on your mobile phone so you can keep in touch for almost nothing wherever you are! Try Nimbuzz or Sipdroid.

• Use Google Docs without moderation!  Google Doc is a web-based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application suite that enables you to create and edit documents online collaborating with your colleagues.

• Stay connected and available when you have to leave your home (to pick-up the kids, do some afternoon shopping to avoid rush hour or simply get some fresh air!): Nokia Easy Meet, an intuitive collaboration tool that can offer real-time content sharing via both mobile devices and PCs. Mobile device users can see, interact with, and share content directly on or from the device. And don’t forget to have your Skype/Google voice calls routed to your mobile!

• Don’t forget to keep in touch with your on-line community while on the move! Should they be family, friends or business partners, they’re always happy to hear from you and know what you’re currently working on.

• Decide to wait until 2017 to really get a cool Startrek-like home-office cubicle. And if you are not that patient, you’ll probably get used to Mozilla’s AURORA by then.

• and keep an eye on the software and tools that are meant to help make your “mobile” lives easier (recommended by 52ndwest and all the good blogs who work at making your mobile life experience, unforgettable!)

***

In my world, those technologies are already available and reliable. But the main obstacle which needs to be overcome is not technological, but organizational as most companies’ top execs find it hard to let their employees organize their own work time. Sadly, in many latin countries like France, Italy or Spain, it is still the time you spend in an office that counts, and not so much your efficiency at work. And is it fortuitous that Scandinavian countries have today the best quality of live in the world? I think there is much we can get from them and implement in terms of balanced working life.

want more on how to improve your remote working experience? read 10 tools to help your remote workers stay in touch, Master the Art of Working Remotely, Succeeding in Working Remotely, Tips for working from home, Home Office Highway ‘09: Remote Work Tools & a Road Warrior in Prep Mode, the digital nomad 1, 2 and 3)

if only you had LogMeIn and Dropbox installed on your home PC/Mac, this wouldn’t turn your trip or week-end into a nightmare! You could then unpack your laptop, connect to the Internet (by wifi or using your mobile phone equipped with JoikuSpot Lite) and go and get exactly what you’re looking for (while sipping your Latte).

LogMeIn is a free software which runs on PCs and Macs, and which gives you a fast, easy remote access to your PC from any computer with an Internet connection. You just have to install the software provided by the editor (download free version here) on the computer you want to remotely access, and then you can access it from ANY PC, Mac or PDA/Smartphone (even a public workstation in an Internet café) with a browser installed on it, ANYWHERE in the World. You just need to log in on LogMeIn webpage using your credentials and then you’ll be able to go through the full content of your laptop as if you were just sitting in front of it! If you want to know more about LogMeIn, you can have a look below atthe video tutorial (6’33)

Thanks to Dropbox, you’ll be able to synchronize and access your files from any computer in the World equipped with a web browser. Dropbox is free (download it here) and compatible with Windows, Mac OS and Linux!

This is how it works: Once Dropbox is running on your computer(s), any files or folders inside Dropbox will get synchronized to Dropbox’s servers and any other computer linked to your account.

Green checkmarks will appear on top of your files to let you know that they’re synced and up to date. The main feature of Dropbox is that it keeps track of every change made to any of its contents. Any changes are instantly and automatically sent to any other computer linked to your Dropbox!

Dropbox is also an outstanding collaborative platform which makes it easy for users to work on team projects, music/video editing, and much more with other people. As a matter of facts, any member of a shared folder can add, edit and delete the contents within and changes made to a shared folder are instantly sent to every member of that folder! And if you need to share some files with non-Dropbox users, just drop files into your Public folder: any files in here will be given a link that you can send to others in emails, IMs, blogs, etc. without requiring people to sign up for Dropbox! This is what I did with the image above: click on it, and you’ll be able to access it on the web from my public folder!

One of the most compelling reasons to use Dropbox is its off-line functionality. When you sign up, you can download the company’s desktop client, which allows you to drag-and-drop files into it. Once complete, it syncs with your on-line account in the background while you work.

But if you’re more of a Symbian/”check your documents on the go” fan, you should definitely try and download Orb! This little program that runs on your PC, allows you to access the full content of your laptop from the screen of any mobile phone browser with a streaming media player (log in to mycast.orb.com)! The access to your folder and documents is incredibly fast with 3G and you can eventually watch a movie in streaming when connected to wifi! Just try it, it’s worth it and it’s free!

So the next time you want to do some show off “Digital Native free style” like, just show up at your client/prospect meeting with a cool attitude and your log in credential to your Dropbox/LogMeIn account in your pocket!