More Mobile: Black Friday (Premium)

Like many of you, I pay attention to the Black Friday deals on personal technology every year. But this time is a bit different: we’re no longer interested in larger items—-smart speakers and the like—that will further tie us to our current home and make it harder to move. Instead, we’re thinking longer term to those more mobile devices that might prove valuable in the future. Why not save some money on things we’ll actually need?

Well. I guess there are reasons. We’re not sure when we’ll sell the house, and we’re not sure what things will look like in the coming year, let alone after that. But we did get a nice collection of Amazon gift certificates, and so we decided to use them pragmatically. Here are a few of the items I’ve purchased so far.

Note: Yes, there are affiliate links in this post. And, yes, I can understand why you’d think that’s why this article exists in the first place. But that’s not the case: it was only while writing it that it occurred to me to use affiliate links, but I figured, what the heck, every little bit helps. Any small amount I make from Amazon goes directly into new device purchases, which almost always helps the site too. Thanks! —Paul

Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Wireless Desktop Set

I swear by the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse: aside from the proprietary USB-A dongle, which I assume offers a more reliable connection than Bluetooth, this set is nearly perfect. I toss out the external numeric keypad since I’ll never use it, but the keyboard itself, with its raised front, and the mouse, with its baseball-like shape, are both very ergonomic and this set has been my preferred option for years.

I purchased a new set because it’s half off—$65 instead of the normal $130—not because I need it now. Instead, I’ll use my current set until it’s non-functional, and then I can switch to the new one. If I’m lucky, I’ll move it to wherever we go next in the box.

Laptop stand

I successfully switched from a desktop PC and display to a laptop on a portable laptop stand about two months ago. And if I’m being honest with myself, I’m surprised it worked out so well: I had temporarily made such a switch various times in years past, but it never stuck, and I found myself retreating to my traditional setup. After all, I’d been using a desktop PC since, well, my first PC in the early 1990s. Habits are hard to break.

But this time, for whatever reason, the switch went well. I started with the largest laptop I had, with a 15-inch display, to ease the process, and then over time I’ve tried 14- and 13.3.-inch laptops as well. One key to this configuration is getting the laptop display up at face level, ideally with the top of its display just above your eye line, and that will require a laptop stand or, if you’re feeling DIY-ish and don’t care about looks, maybe a stack of books. (I’ve certainly used my share of weird items to raise a laptop display while doing podcasts in hotels over the years.)

To date, I’ve been using a Nexstand Portable Laptop Stand, which is inexpensive (about $30) and, as its name suggests, quite portable. But I was hoping to get something a little more substantial, as well as something that can raise a smaller laptop high enough so that the top of the display is at the correct height: a 15-inch laptop is perfect, a 14-inch one is just about fine, and a 13.3-inch laptop is a bit too low.

I’d had my eye on this Lifelong Ergonomic Laptop Stand because it seems to cut a nice compromise between height adjustment, stability, and portability, and it supposedly works with even a 17-inch laptop, which is unusual. But at $120, I wasn’t about to replace something I already owned that was working OK. But at $60 on sale, and with an Amazon gift card in tow, I took the plunge.

Anker PowerPort III 65W Pod Lite USB-C charger

I missed out on the Nano version of this charger, which is even smaller and less expensive, but the Anker PowerPort III 65W Pod Lite solves a problem: it’s smaller, often much smaller, than the 65-watt charger that comes with most PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks, and it will work with any USB-C-based device, including smartphones that support the latest charging specs.

Of course, I would not normally buy such a thing since I don’t technically need it: I have chargers for my phones and laptops. But I can see two uses for this charger. It would be a smaller thing to carry in my bag on trips since it works with everything. (And I could just keep it in there if that’s how I use it.) And I could use it to power the USB-C hub I’m currently using with my laptop stand if the laptop I’m using has a proprietary power adapter. (Which the PC I’m currently using does.)

Either way, it was only $28, which is roughly as much as the 30-watt Google USB-C charger I recently purchase. The normal price is $34, so it wasn’t much of a savings but, again, I have some gift cards to burn through.

Anker Power Strip with USB-C

If you follow my What I Use articles, you know that I’ve been traveling with an Anker Power Strip with USB for years. This very useful travel companion sports a 5-foot extension cord, three power outlets, and three USB-A ports, and it’s ideal for those hotel rooms or Airbnbs where there aren’t enough power receptacles (which is typical) or whatever receptacles that do exist are inconveniently located.

But I as noted in What I Use: Paris 2021 (Premium), we’ve run into a weird situation in which most of our devices are now USB-C based, not USB-A, and on that trip in particular neither my wife nor I had brought a single USB-A-to-USB-C cable; we only had USB-C cables. I looked into buying a few inexpensive adapters, but then I discovered that Anker makes a new version of the power strip I love so much that has two improvements: a single 30-watt USB-C port with Power Delivery (PD) for fast charging and an angled power plug that will make plugging in the strip easier in tight spaces.

Plus, it’s on sale for $24 vs. the normal $30 selling price. And it has everything else I loved about the previous power strip: three power receptacles, (two) USB-A ports, and a 5-foot extension cable. It’s a win-win.

Looking to the future

Our next trip is in January, when we’ll travel to Mexico City for 18 days. This isn’t a vacation, though I’m sure we’ll see some sights and get out into the city. Instead, this is a test run of sorts for this more mobile future, an alternative to the home swaps we’d done for over 15 years in a row prior to the pandemic. That is, my wife and I will work normally from an Airbnb in Mexico City each day, and I’ll be bringing along my normal desktop setup—laptop, laptop, stand, USB-C hub, external keyboard and mouse, and so—to see how mobile it really is.

I’m also reminded of something that happened on our last trip, a long weekend in Washington D.C. in early November that I didn’t write about since it provides a funny endcap to a previous related discussion. When we were heading to Paris in October, I had mentioned somewhere—the Premium newsletter, I think—that I’d be recording Windows Weekly during that trip. And I got some feedback from readers who worried that I’d somehow be keeping my wife in a hotel room instead of spending time with her out in the city during what was a delayed 30th-anniversary trip.

I explained at the time that nothing could be further from the truth, that my wife would in fact rely on that downtime to rest and perhaps get some of her own work done. (And she ended up doing both.) And that the two of us were completely in sync when it comes to this kind of thing.

But since then, two things happened.

First, we went to Paris, and we ended up seeing and doing even more than we’d imagined would be possible, walking an average of over 22,000 steps each day. And second, when we arrived in Washington D.C. in early November after a longer-than-usual 4.5-hour drive and got settled into the hotel room, I wanted to rush out and grab some late afternoon photos while the light was perfect and before the sun fully set. But my wife had some work she had to finish that day and it was getting late. And so she kept me waiting in a hotel room instead of letting me spend time out in my favorite city in the United States. Ha!

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be writing about each of these purchases—gifts, really—soon.