I ride my bicycle to work every day. I have been doing so for the last 4 years. I don’t like carrying the bag on my shoulders because it gets heavy so I installed a bike rack in the back and put two carabiners on one side of the rack. The bag now securely hangs from the carabiners. People who have seem my design often compliment me on how it is simple and ingeneous. So, I should be happy, but just like the primitive human (who was not content on getting out of the cave or building a fire had to invent a wheel so that he could escape all those uninvited guests who had gathered around the fire that he had just build outside his cave) I wasn’t satisfied either. 

The question was how to avoid the carrying the laptop completely. Now I must admit that I love my laptop, but I sit in a cubicle in front of a monitor which is attached to my laptop, so I am not really using the screen of my laptop but only the CPU part of it. So the quest here deals with how to design a system where I still use my laptop but I do not bring it to the office with me. And I think I have found a solution.

I am using my Note 9 to connect to a DEX dongle, which basically allows me to connect a monitor, monitor, mouse, keyboard and other USB devices to the phone. I then use a screen emulator such as Chrome Remote Desktop to connect to my laptop at home. So now I am able to see my laptop screen on my monitor in the cubicle through my phone and work as if I was working on my laptop. 

This solution works seamlessly because Samsung built a software called DEX into its S8, S9 and Note 9 phones. I have been using this solution for a few weeks now and find not having to lug my laptop around liberating.  

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Aamir Fadai
Aamir is a PhD student in the College of Education and Human Development