<p>Hello HPR land, this is Tony Hughes again coming to you from Blackpool in the UK.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<ul>
<li>Lenovo X230i</li>
<li>Toshiba z30</li>
<li>Dells E6220 x 2, E7250, E7440 and E6540</li>
</ul>
<p>Recently I have moved more to Dell laptops and the Dell E7440 is a great compromise of portability and usability with its 14&quot; 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&quot; screen.</p>
<p>But all the others have their place in the bag, for demonstrating Linux Distros at events or at my LUG.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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: <em>All good things come to an end</em>.</p>
<p>Well that’s it for this episode, this is Tony Hughes signing off for Hacker Public Radio.</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.keithstead.com/and_more/reviews/zoomh2.html" class="uri">https://www.keithstead.com/and_more/reviews/zoomh2.html</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.realnorth.co.uk/" class="uri">https://www.realnorth.co.uk/</a></p></li>
</ul>
