In The Bag

If you’re a mobile IT exec in state or local government — and frankly, who in IT isn’t on the go? — what you can carry in your bag often must add up to a portable office of sorts. So what tech goodies and gadgets should make the cut? Here are 10 cool and weight-worthy items to consider toting along.

1. Bag:

Start off with a bag that can stow your tech ware securely but also provide you easy access. The Targus TTL500 is designed with the road warrior in mind: It has an extra padded compartment for a second notebook, a projector or even a camera.

2. Notebook:

You can go super small with a netbook or a mini, such as the HP Mini 2140, which weighs 2.6 pounds but has 2 gigabytes of RAM and runs a full Windows Office suite.

3. Smartphone:

The BlackBerry Bold can do triple duty — as a phone, mail minder and officemate; Word-, PowerPoint- and Excel-compatible apps allow viewing and editing of Office files.

4. Flash drive:

To tote files securely and on your person, check out the IronKey Enterprise USB drive; it has FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation.

5. Keyboard:

If you spend a lot of time typing, then a portable keyboard is not a luxury. The Unotron FlexiTuff FT10 can stand up to spills: Rinse it, dry it and roll it up.

6. Mouse:

The Iogear Phaser 3-in-1 GME422RW6, a wireless mouse and presenter, works up to 30 feet from a notebook (and even has a laser pointer).

7. Cooling Pad:

Avoid scorched thighs (silently) with a fanless Thermaltake iXoft R15ON01 notebook pad.

8. Projector:

At less than 2 pounds and small enough to fit in your palm, the Samsung P400 is a projector that you actually can toss in your bag.

9. Scanner:

The Visioneer Roadwarrior scanner weighs in at 10.6 ounces, scans 36-bit color and can be powered by a USB port.

10. Headset:

Create your own environment anywhere by blocking out surrounding noise with the Sennheiser MM 200 Bluetooth stereo in-ear headset.

So get out of the office — what are you waiting for?