As the world moves on discovering newer technology domains aimed at easing man's workload and enabling more work in less time, every one tends to get excited about the rewards of such advances. However, here is an industry which has stayed in the 1990s still, with only a handful of professionals embracing technology and reaping the dividends of it.
Reliance Launches the All-New JioBook at ₹16,499
We have 1000s of home-based transcriptionists working in India. I was wondering how many of them use a laptop and how many of them use a PC? I have not done any survey yet, but my gut feeling says most of them still use a PC . I remember our environment minister in this context, I know this is weird, he called driving an SUV in India "criminal." The same thought and intent goes true for the users of PC.
While people prefer the comfort of home to work and earn, they would conveniently ignore the benefits of using a laptop for transcription/editing at home. For me, a PC is a monster eating up so much of space and consuming a lot of power and most importantly, IMMOBILE.
All the software that we use in MT can be loaded on to a notebook, all the hardware can be connected to it. The only thing that you need to buy extra is a keyboard just to ensure that your laptop stays alive for longer duration. With all your super fast key strokes, a laptop keyboard may get damaged, so just connect a USB keyboard,
Coming to the power part. Most parts of our country experience power cuts. You need to invest heavily on a UPS. The thought of running a PC on a UPS is from the last century guys. Wake up. You get laptops that provide 4 hours or more of productive work when fully charged (with all your necessary applications running, that is). With a small UPS you can get 1 to 2 hours of backup (Rs. 12,000 approximately). This time is enough for you to fully charge your laptop. You get an additional 4 hours of work time. So with a laptop you can work 10 hours uninterrupted. For me it makes money sense as follows: 8 hours x 150 lines of transcription = 1200 lines. You can calculate the money you can make with that many lines transcribed. This way, you can kick power cuts out of your risk list.
You can connect your modem power to the UPS so it stays alive throughout. So you just have your laptop charger and the modem power supply connected to your UPS. Believe me, it will run for many more hours than promised, and ensure that you are online for as long as you want.
Last, but the most smart, you can take your laptop wherever you are going. As long as you are assured of a stable internet connection and a UPS, then you can travel across the country and still work. This may not be feasible for everyone, because individual employer contracts may prohibit movement of your machine from one place to the other. For all the others, this makes a lot of sense.
So guys, take a flight to the 21st century if you have not done so yet. You may still be years behind the regular folks, but as the saying goes, better late than never. There is a lot to learn, and there is a lot to earn by embracing technology. Never say no to it.
Comments