Mobile tech trends for small business

There's all kinds of gear on the market designed to help you be more agile in business, but how do you sort the truly useful from the gimmicky? Here's a roundup of the hot new technologies worth investing in.

1. Smartphones

First up, we can't go past the smartphone. These are fast becoming THE gadget of the new decade. Maybe your business supports Blackberry, or something more generic. Me, I like the iPhone. It's elegant and simple, but it still has enough grunt to handle your email, calendar and contacts. And thanks to WiFi and Bluetooth, you can sync with your desktop PC without even having to plug it in.

One especially neat feature is Visual Voicemail. It's like traditional voicemail, except all your current messages are listed by contact name. To hear a voicemail, you just tap the message. No dialing in and wading through menus. Just select, tap and listen.

The iPhone even keeps several of your deleted messages in a sort of trash bin - great if you delete a message and suddenly realise you forgot to take down the important info in it.

With the latest firmware update to the iPhone, you can also connect it directly to your notebook via ‘USB tethering'. This makes the phone act like a modem - you're still using mobile 3G internet, but on your proper screen, without having to wait for the phone's browser to convert everything into squinty-type.

“Travelling with tech is no longer a Herculean task ... and soon, it may give you the perfect excuse to stop going in to the office at all” 

2. Netbooks

Speaking of your notebook PC - well, it's too heavy, there's no plainer way of putting it. Even if you have a six-month-old model that weighs a fraction under two kilos, that's still too heavy. The future of portable PCs is feather light.

Consider the Sony Vaio X. This netbook is a mere 14mm thick and weighs just 655g. That's lighter than your average hardback novel. Lighter than the box it comes in.

Yes, it's a netbook, and that means it won't win any prizes for sheer computing power. And you won't be playing the latest games on it as you wait for your flight to be called. But PC manufacturers have realised that a business traveller doesn't NEED a gaming powerhouse.

You need a machine that runs your spreadsheet, your word processor, all your communication applications (email, Skype, custom office VPN interface, and so on), and gives you seven hours or so of battery life.

Extreme batteries are something you'll hear a lot about in 2010. The Vaio X includes an optional extended battery that boosts the charge up to an incredible 14 hours. Can manufacturers hit the Holy Grail of endurance - 24 hours - by the end of the year? Fingers crossed.

That said, maybe your battery will become obsolete anyway.

3. Solar chargers

Portable solar chargers have been around for a couple of years now, but they've mostly been targeted at hikers and adventure holidayers. Sleeker, more compact units are hitting the market, and are specifically designed to charge mobile phones and low-power netbooks.

So you can duck out to the park, clip the solar panel to the outside of your satchel, and chunk-check your emails in the sun.

4. External hard drives and portable memory

Of course, you'll want fast access to your data, and netbooks are famous for having less-than-generous hard drives. As for your smartphone, well, yes it can store documents, but what about high-resolution video? Soon, but not this year.

Portable hard drives are slimmer than ever. Consider Western Digital's Passport drive or Seagate's FreeAgent Go. Not only are these drives slim, they're also pretty stylish. Like a blank-faced iPod. And they come with automatic backup software and a range of security features.

They're still traditional, magnetic hard drives with spinning discs inside them though, and no manner of shock-proofing can help them compete against true solid-state storage. SanDisk has a flash drive that automatically backs up your nominated data as soon as you plug it in via USB. And the future is in SSDs (Solid State Drives), which are basically a big flash chip, but much much faster than the chip you put in your digital camera.

5. Digital cameras and accessories

Ah yes, digital cameras. How useful they've become for many businesses. Quick photos, turned around in an afternoon. But printing off a bunch of site photos just to show a client can be tedious. Who has two hours to get that done?

What about a camera with a built-in projector? Nikon's new Coolpix S1000pj has one. It's a 12-megapixel point-n-shoot camera, but once you've captured the image, press another button and its projected on the wall.

For now, it's strictly slide-show material, but give manufacturers a few more months and you'll be seeing HD video. If your business needs creative video quick, consider Canon's EOS 1D Mark IV - its sensor is so sophisticated it can shoot video in almost any lighting conditions. You get professional-looking footage without the need for filters, lighting, reflectors and all that other bulky stuff.

So maybe you're a road warrior, maybe you just want to get out of the sealed, air-conditioned skyscraper, maybe you need to travel a lot. The point is that there's now less to carry, and what there is, does a lot more.

By the end of the year, expect your devices to go all day on a charge, expect your netbook to have 3G connectivity, and your smartphone to do everything all your other devices do anyway.

Travelling with tech is no longer a Herculean task. And soon, it may give you the perfect excuse to stop going in to the office at all.