Gearing up
by Volker Weber
Isn't it amazing how much gear I am packing these days for just two people/two weeks? One iBook, one iPod, two smart phones, two digicams and a GPS receiver, power supplies and cables for all of them. That is seven power supplies alone.
And since this is supposed to be a vacation, I leave a lot behind that I would throw into the bag otherwise. Like an access point, a bridge, a voice recorder and such.
No, I do not want a video camera.
Comments
We went on a vacation to France for two weeks. Took my pbook along as well as my mobile phone (no gprs), as I wanted to try out surfing or at least reading mail.
Took an hour to download a mail via pop (I blame my friends with all their funny attachments), 20 minutes to open my webmail page to see all the entries - Not really funny, 5 minutes to open a news page.
Then I got my phone bill - close to 250 euros for a few hours of slow online.
Never again (or at least, not for a looooong time) !
vowe,
i know your feeling, during customer visits - and even if those visits are just for two days - i throw in my notebook, its power supply, two pockert pcs incl cradle etra sync cable and power supply, my digicam incl datacable cf to pccard thingy, the gps mouse for the car navigation (using tomtom navigator 3), at least one spare external harddisc (since you never know if you'd need it) and lots of other gadgets.
too bad that i did not mark the power supplies to differentiate them. almost cooed the ipaq using the wrong supply.
on my last flight i had serious problems on with the security guys - since x-raying my bags showed up a mess of cabling and stuff (i was carrying the mass of ethernet cables we needed for an event and half a dozend kensington notebook locks.)
Just don't forget your map (and some brains) in addition to your GPS receiver. I'm still laughing about the posh yuppie couple who wanted to go to Skye and ended up in Thurso with their fancy navigation system. I'll let you look at a map yourself to see how far apart the two places are...
Oh, and the weather is atrocious down here in England at the moment. I just hope it's better up in Scotland or at least is better once I hit the road on Friday.
