chelseagirl | So *that* was not clever

My laptop is very mobile. Not only does it travel with me, whether to work or on trips, but I use it all over the apartment, in the bedroom (desk or bed), livingroom (couch), and dining alcove (table). Only last Saturday I managed to drop it, and while I'm due for a new one in the fall (thank you, university!), one of the hinges broke and the trackpad went wonky.

I dropped it off on Monday, thinking maybe they could tighten a screw or something, but they pointed out there was an area that was exposed at the crack and maybe it could be repaired or maybe I'd get a replacement. I was next on campus on Thursday (we're still semi-remote, so I've been going in twice a week for my "converged" class and to work in the office, which is large and nice and right now very quiet). I stopped by the desk where I'd dropped it off and the student working there was like "well, they haven't gotten back to me and . . ."

So I had a heavy old loaner in my office, and was using M's at home. FWIW, M's mum bought us a desktop when we were first married -- within a few months it was clear that sharing a computer was a bad idea, and I went back to using my laptop. So yeah. Feeling very unsettled not having a computer of my own to set up all my stuff on.

Thank goodness, I saw that B's light was on in his office as I left the building. B made a few phone calls and in about an hour or so, P was at my office with a new Lenovo. He said it could be loaner and I could trade it in when I'm supposed to exchange in the fall, or I could just keep it. By the time I get everything set up, I suspect I'm going to just keep it. Also, they're unsure Lenovos or Dells and I rather undignifiedly said "not Dell!!" because I had one good Dell in the early 90s and then they started overproducing and I had very bad experiences with Dells consistently (my own, using my mom's, ones at offices I worked at).

So now I'm moving things over from my external hard drive and trying to recall correct passwords for all the sites I visit on a regular basis. And wondering if I am just a dinosaur when P asked why I didn't save everything to Google Drive? I said it was because I don't like Googledocs and prefer to use Word and be able to work offline, but he said I didn't need to use Googledocs and now I am thinking that I really should look into this.

And ironically? I picked out M's new computer last fall, and got a different Lenovo model from the one I had. Which is now the model I have, too, so . . . twinsies?

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I'm glad you got a solution. I dropped a laptop several laptops ago and broke a hinge, too. I could use it, but only in one specific location with the top propped up. LOL Very annoying.

I am so dependent on this thing.

FWIW, re: Dell: When my employer issues PC laptops (minority use case), it issues Lenovos. :-)

And, yep, you no longer have to use GSuite aka Google Workplace to get all sorts of good use from Drive. You can work offline in the GSuite apps if you want to (I write fanfic mostly offline in Google Docs), and just sync to online storage when it pleases you. There is also now much increased direct compatibility/interoperability with MS Word and MS Excel as they are.

Help article for if you use the professional/EDU version of Google Workspace through your employer (I suspect you do?): "Work with Microsoft Office files in Google Drive"

Help article for if you use the regular pubic totally free version of the same Google apps: "Work with Microsoft Office files"

They're very, very similar, but, as you'd expect, if an organization subscribes, it gets extra functionality for its use case, including admin controls and stuff.

P.S. This is probably the best place for you to start, given your use case: "Work with Office files using Office editing in Google Drive"

Thanks for all your good advice! I think my dislike for Googledocs stems to the fact that I end up with all kinds of clutter in my Google Drive, because of everything that's shared with me by colleagues and students. I find it much harder to organize and navigate than just keeping my files in order on my hard drive. But I need to have a backup in addition to my physical external drive; a project for the summer.

I use Dropbox for everything that isn't a program installation - all my files, work, personal, writing, game, saved games, media, everything goes in the Dropbox folder. I also use LastPass for passwords, and that file is in Dropbox too. It means that "setting up a new machine" is largely now "install Dropbox", and it is amazing how seamless it is.

I've mostly used Dropbox for shared projects -- less so now that everyone just shares Googledocs instead. I've found it clumsy, but I suspect because of the shared projects aspect. Every time one of my colleagues hit save on a manuscript that he was primarily writing but several of us had access to, somehow I got notified.

That definitely sounds unpleasant. I've not used it in that context, though, and as an isolated user, it's excellent. It also means that on the occasions where I want to share a file with someone, it's already on the Dropbox server, and I can just give them the link.

Glad you managed to get it resolved!

Thanks!

Ooof, I started saving to OneDrive after my last major computer crash, and was sad for a bit but found a great deal of my old files in a different external hard drive. Still, lost an entire novel draft to motherboard failure and now taking advantage of my Microsoft account as much as possible. And since it doesn't have to sync automatically, I do have to remember to save not just to my harddrive, but also to the OneDrive.

But it's true that you don't need to use GDocs to save things to GDrive! But I think you still have to upload to the Drive? (In OneDrive, the new Office includes OneDrive as a Save As option.)

I think this is the one I might try.

The university set up my laptop before it was given to me -- I've had to add and customize things, but the basics were already there. But my partner bought a similar laptop last fall (at my recommendation) and we found it defaulted to One Drive. Honestly, M uses it primarily for online meetings and to store their photography, so we never explored it.

I'm a Google Drive enthusiast,though only for the admin and fannish sides of my life. My university administration, advising, and service work all lives on the U's Google Drive. That makes collaboration seamless. I don't have to worry about who's working with what version. I can control their level of access so other faculty can comment on a document, for instance, but not edit it. I just got our third admin assistant in six mmonths, this one only to help with timetable changes. I gave her editing access to our relevant folders in a few clicks. At least that was easy in the otherwise awfulness of this year.My

Google Drive also allows colour coding of folders (same as email) and that is transformative. All of my chair duties folders are in red, even the sub-folders for advising, etc. All of my teaching folders are in orange. I watched a K-12 teacher's video on colour coded Drive organization that was inspiring (pro-tip? Number folders to numerical order in the system you want, overriding the default alphabetical order.)

I still don't have my teaching and research files all on Google Drive: they're all well corralled on my laptop (also a Lenovo). But at least I have an external drive on my desk at home doing regular backups. Google also has a great tool to allow you to backup and download your Drive and other Google data like your email: Google Takeout.

So that was not clever

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