Family Tech: I love it when they think I'm a wizard

Last Friday I went to a friend's house to help get her Christmas present, an HP netbook, up and running.

I had done the same for her when she bought a new laptop several months ago. She wanted to make sure the same programs she used on the laptop were on the netbook, and she had access to the same files.

I looked on the laptop for the notes file I had made with the list of applications, and her logins and passwords, specifically for Dropbox. Dropbox is very useful for making sure the files she uses on the laptop, she also has on the netbook, and indeed, on her office computer.

I couldn't find the notes file on the laptop, but I quickly pulled it up on my phone in Evernote where I'd stored a copy.

When we decided she needed a copy of Office on the netbook, I reminded her she was eligible for a student discount. We went out to one of the many websites that market Office to students. When it required a scan of her student ID card, I used DocScan on my Android phone to take a photo of her student ID card, convert it to a PDF file and email it to her account so she could forward it from her own account to the retailer.

Needless to say, she was quite impressed with what I could accomplish with just my phone.

To tell the truth, so was I. It was all a good illustration of what I had just written about and submitted for this week's Family Tech column: Towards the Paperless Home.

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