## hpr2842 :: What's in my Bag an update to hpr2065

 Hello HPR land, this is Tony Hughes again coming to you from Blackpool in the UK.
During my last episode, which was my 50th for HPR, I realized that my ‘Bag’ has changed considerably since recording my episode hpr2065 about it back in July 2016. So this is an update on what I currently carry in my ‘Geek’ Bag when out and about.
I have several laptops which are used for different things at different times so may or may not be in the bag/bags depending on what I am doing. This is the list:

Lenovo X230i
Toshiba z30
Dells E6220 x 2, E7250, E7440 and E6540

Recently I have moved more to Dell laptops and the Dell E7440 is a great compromise of portability and usability with its 14" 1080p screen, but if I want light and long battery life the Toshiba z30 is a fantastic little PC with all day battery life and a great 13.3" screen.
But all the others have their place in the bag, for demonstrating Linux Distros at events or at my LUG.
So the next thing that makes it into the bag is my ZoomH2 recorder that goes with me for recording interviews at events I attend, with the intention of producing HPR shows.
I also have some tools, the first is a little set of a screwdriver and small driver bits made by Draper this is handy for laptop tear downs as it has all the necessary bit heads needed to work on electronics. I also carry a small set of pliers and a wire cutter in the bag.
I also carry a 10000mA battery pack for charging my mobile phone if needed while out and about. In conjunction with this a I carry several micro USB charging cables and a USB C cable for the increasing number of USB C devices around these days.
In the bag are also a couple of 128Gb SSD’s as spares for quick swap outs, if I don’t want to wipe a drive but wish to test a new OS, or for those times the only solution to helping someone rescue an older laptop is to stick an SSD into it.
I generally carry my 1Tb portable USB3 HDD around with me as I store a large number of current Linux ISO files for burning to a flash drive to create boot discs. With that it goes without saying that I have a few spare flash drives in the bag for just this use. I also usually carry a few SD cards for creating Raspberry Pi images if needed.
Other items include a USB WiFi card as a backup if I have a WiFi malfunction, or I’m working on a machine without its own WiFi card.
Well that’s about it for what I’m currently carrying in my bag, but before I go a bit of sad news. Many of you have heard me talk of my latest bargains from the Computer Auction I have frequented since 2006. Well sadly NO MORE, Northern Realisations after 20 years of trading have closed their doors for the last time, so I need to find another source of cheap PC equipment. As they say: All good things come to an end.
Well that’s it for this episode, this is Tony Hughes signing off for Hacker Public Radio.

https://www.keithstead.com/and_more/reviews/zoomh2.html
https://www.realnorth.co.uk/

