Today’s CEO at the top of his or her game must rely on a number of gadget and tools to get the job done as effectively and efficiently as possible. Here are but a few of the tech toys that can make a CEO’s life a who lot easier

Nothing makes a statement in a CEO’s room like a large-screen sliver-thin television.

Presentations made on one of those gleaming pieces of hi tech would be instantly convincing. But apart from the glitz, a big television makes more sense today because CEOs are increasingly switching to small laptops, whose screens are barely able to grab the attention of anyone sitting a few feet away.  Kit a TV of say 40 or 46 inches with an HDMI cable connectable to a laptop and you have a place to video conference, make presentations, and discuss documents with others.  It also makes sense to ensure your television is Internet capable.

Although it may seem like overkill to carry both a laptop and a tablet, there are some things only a tablet can do. You can choose to go either of two ways.

Get a tablet to whip out when you’re on the go and don’t want to unsheathe a laptop. That means something small, like the Samsung Note. While there are many Android tablets in the market, none yet has a significant advantage over the iPad and its ecosystem.  The Note’s hybrid size gives it the edge of handiness. E-mail, messaging, browsing, quick-marking documents, and even precision work is possible because of its stylus S-Pen.  For a more full-fledged tablet experience, the iPad is a fantastic companion, giving the CEO not only alternative ways of working when they needs to, but enriching their activities, whether they involve kicking back to read a book or watching a movie on the airplane.  The over 500,000 apps cater to needs you didn’t even know you had.

With everything being about on-the-go, here’s one that isn’t.

A personal coffee machine in your room not only means you can work in peace and quiet without interruption but that you can disarm visitors with coffee of their choice, always a great aid to discussion. Cheap drip filter coffee machines don’t result in great taste and manual espresso machines may give great tasting coffee, but are too tedious and time-consuming. Automatic and semi-automatic machines have a strength and volume that is electronically controlled but one still needs to work with coffee grounds. The top end machines are repositories for coffee beans that are automatically ground while making the coffee and mix the milk with a single touch.  Top brands include are DeLonghi, Siemens and Philips. A new breed of machines are the ones that use coffee ‘capsules’. Drop the capsule into the machine and press a button. A wonderful espresso is ready quite quickly. No mess, no fuss. The coffee is delicious and several flavours and strengths, including decaf are available.

Where smartphones are concerned, the CEO is spoilt for choice. And yet, as a person who needs to be connected with colleagues all the time, they need a smartphone that works well with those of others, is reliable, a known quantity and secure. That mostly means the BlackBerry, perhaps the top-of-the line Bold 9900.  While BlackBerry maker Research in Motion’s troubles are no secret, it is a fact that professionals still lean towards BlackBerry phones. That doesn’t mean it has to be the only smartphone. Pick either the iPhone 5 or go the Android way with the Samsung Galaxy S3.  Until another smartphone becomes as preferred, the work phone of choice is a still BlackBerry.

This year, Ultrabooks, light, thin stylish SSD-based notebooks based on Intel’s specs began to flood the market. For professionals on the move, they make tremendous sense. Quick-starting and working fast, these are designed to make working through the day more effortless. Battery life is not less than 5 hours, making it easier to carry the device around without worrying about heavy power adaptors. Today, one can think of an Ultrabook-desktop or Ultrabook-notebook combination, provided you use cloud storage to move your data between devices – very easy to do.  Many Ultrabooks will be coming soon, to add to the list of Asus, Samsung, HP, Dell and Lenovo. Many point out, however, that Ultrabooks are only an imitation of the MacBook Air, which is what you might like to consider in 11- or 13-inch configurations. BM