In 1999, work issued me the 1st PDA I'd ever had. It was an
IBM WorkPad, which was just a
Palm III in a black IBM case, but l was ecstatic. With this device. I made my first steps toward reducing my dependence on paper. Other than the expected portability of contact information (including radio and pager PIN numbers) and notes, I could now carry around support-related documentation using
Documents to Go.
It didn't take me long to get fed up with the limitations of the 2mb device, and I bought first a Casio Cassiopeia BE-300, then a Dell Axim X5. As with the WorkPad, support documentation and contact information were kept handy on the handheld, but now I used Pocket Word, TextMaker and Adobe Reader for PocketPC.
When I started buying tablets, the possibility of finding a network connection at my usual work site was rare, so I still exported my call list to Word. I settled on my V1250 after buying two older tablets, and not long after, I got Agilix GoBinder, which has been great. Now, instead of wading through my many document folders to scan a long list of documentation on how to support Hardware A, the steps for installing and configuring Application B, or the latest Googled info on the best way to remove and recover from Spyware C, I have everything nicely organized in tabs and folders in one database...which I copy to a server any time I make significant changes.
The effort hasn't been solely mine. A few years ago, my group started keeping documents in a shared folder on our Exchange server. The old stuff remains, but now we use a SharePoint site, instead. If I'm in the field and am missing some information, I can get to it from my TPC or any other computer on our network (and make sure it finds its way into GoBinder for future reference). From the SharePoint site, I can also find out which programmers, server admins, trainers, etc are on call and how to reach them.
I still have a 2-inch binder stuffed with printouts of old, but I can't recall the last time I looked in it or added to it. I'm happy about that.