When technology simply works…

In my job as a support engineer, I spend my day trying to fix problem. So it is refreshing when, sometimes, the technology that we’re providing simply works.

Like this morning when I decided to test a total autonomous laptop setup. By that I mean that I will on the road tonight and might need internet access for m y laptop.  So I went ahead and configured my Android HTC Desire to act as a WiFi Hotspot.  Then I switched my laptop’s Wireless connection to the SSID that was broadcast by my phone; it connected right away.

Now since I’ll be in a car, I need to have some kind of headset to avoid street noises. So I powered my bluetooth  earphone that I had previously configured to be recognized by my laptop. I went in the notification area and selected the Bluetooth applet & saw that my earphone was been seen. So I connected it.  Now the only thing that doesn’t totally work as I would expect is that I needed to change the whole sound setup of my laptop to send all input and output to my earphone. I’m expecting to use Twinkle for phone calls, and it is the only way I found to have the earphone work properly. If someone knows how to be more selective and have Twinkle use the Bluetooth earphone, I’m a taker.

But this is not a show stopper.  So I fired up Twinkle, connected to my SIP account and dialed my home phone : Drriiiinngg!!!

So I’m there, with my Android phone connecting me to the Internet, my laptop acting as a telephone, while I still have full laptop functionality. I must say that I’m impressed. Don’t get me wrong : I’ve been using Ubuntu since Hoary, and Debian before that.  But nowaday, with all the great work done on those tools, it make rather complex setups work smoothly.

Bravo !