A Windows Champion, Kara Apel is currently the Online Content Editor/Creator at News 12 in Augusta, Ga. (http://www.wrdw.com). She is also Managing Editor of U Chic (http://universitychic.com/), an online resource for young women. In her spare time, she cheers for the University of South Carolina Gamecocks (her alma mater) and enjoys spending time with her Yorkie Poo, Tanner. For more, look here: http://en.gravatar.com/karaapel.
When my boss told me I would be live blogging from The Masters Tournament, I was ecstatic! I seriously couldn’t wait to get started.
Then it hit me – which laptop would I use to make sure I had the best equipment while I was at the golf course?
I was lucky to be able to use the HP Pavilion dm1z that the Windows team had surprised me with by becoming a Windows Champions blogger last year.
It was the perfect choice for my time at Augusta National. Although I had my own desk space in the media center, I had to carry my laptop in and out every single day that week. And let me tell you – the hike to the parking lot was LONG – so I was grateful that it is so lightweight at just 3.5lb! I could easily slip it into one of my bigger purses. I also didn’t have a huge amount of space at my work station, so I was glad for its smaller size – just 11×8 (like a sheet of paper). Although I was out on the golf course for most of the day taking pictures and notes for my blog, I was working like a maniac during the spurts I was inside the media center, typing away furiously to get my updates onto the Web. It could get tricky sometimes when I was juggling between my browser and editing my pictures – thank goodness for the Snap feature!
Since I was taking so many pictures, I found the SD card output incredibly useful. I did not have one of these on the laptop I had in college, and it got extremely annoying to have to carry around my camera cable everywhere. I was able to just quickly slide my memory card in, dump my pictures and run back out onto the course! As for the blogging, it doesn’t get much better than Windows Live Writer. Thankfully, Windows hooked me up with the application on my laptop and it’s free for anyone to download. It helped me to spellcheck and easily visualize what my text would look like on the blog (and see what my word count was looking like).
The week was amazing – filled with so many experiences that I will never forget (and even an interview with one of my favorite golfers) – but having my PC at the course made my work flow so much easier than I could have ever imagined. Thanks, Windows!
