Trains
======
I was in Prague at Friday and in Brno an Saturday. Czech Republic is
small so it's about 3 hours and 20 minutes to Prague and some 2 hours
20 minutes to Brno. I used services of the state train company in all
cases. It's not bad but these are differences. There is tough
competition on the Prague-Ostrava line as there are three companies
(the state one and two private ones). So the prices are competitive,
free WiFi is standard service and so.
On the Brno-Ostrava line it is different. This is less important route
so there is no competition. The trains are older, there is no WiFi and
even no 220V outlets. Surprisingly, in some trains there is near some
service: I started to write this post in the train from Brno and
exactly when I wanted to write that there are no services then a girl
with a mini-bar appeared and offered tea and refreshments for very fair
prices (I really appreciated the cup of hot tea) - a tea and a snack
for about $1.
But that's OK. The only advantage on the line to Prague is that every
seat has a table so one can place laptop on it (at least in the
Pendolino trains). This is not available in trains of the Brno line so
one actually use the laptop as the "lap top". It is not easy because I
have been using the small (7") GPD Pocket.
During these two days I tried to do some work when I was in train. For
a limited period in the past I frequently travelled to Prague and back.
In that time I had a Dell Precision M60 (I think it was this model, it
had a 1600x1200 screen and a fair keyboard with the trackpad) with the
Ubuntu and I was able to do lot of work during these journeys (I
usually departed in the morning, had some meeting in Prague and
returned in the afternoon so I had over 7 hours of time for work in the
train). But after that I never did any useful work in the train (after
all, my train journeys were very infrequent for a long time, and often
also in bad time - in very early mornings or during late nights).
This time it was technically my free time so I had no reason to work.
But I got my GPD Pocket with me. And I was actually able to finish some
things at Friday (edited some documents, updated some stuff, wrote some
letters).
At Saturday I decided to do some programming. I needed to add some
relatively simple functionality to my FEA software but I never find
time to did it. So it has been written during the journey. Using such
small device for coding is not ideal but it is far better than use of
touch phone or PDA.
When I used the WiFI (and the Firefox and/or the Thunderbird) then
estimated battery life was about 6 hours (it was no problem because
there was both WiFI and power outlets). In the train without WiFI (and
thus without running Firefox) the battery life estimation never felt
under 12 hours (even after 2 hours of actual use - which included
frequent compiling of C code - and the indicator still showed such
values). Hmm...