If you’ve ever traveled for any period of time you know that you will need some form of technology with you. Whether it’s a means of communicating with home, a device for checking the internet, a power adapter that can charge your phone or a means of completing your work.
Technology has advanced hugely in the last few years and thing you would never have carried 20 years ago are now a stable part of your luggage. That presents problems as well, as sometimes it’s a question of what should you take.
Today we talk with Dave Dean of www.toomanyadapters.com about what you need when hitting the road, whether your mobile phone is good enough for photographs, what size laptops give you the most power to weight ratio and what he carts in his luggage to get his work as a travel blogger done.
For more information check out the website or Dave’s book Hammocks and Hard Drives
What I learned from speaking with Dave:
- I always have an issue with the weight of my laptop and often wonder about buying a smaller one. There is a sacrifice sometimes with having enough grunt on a smaller computer and it depends on whether you need it for work or travel. You need to also consider the weight of the power adapter as many lightweight models let themselves down with a great big plug that can weigh you down again. Dave looks for a computer that is under 1.5kgs in weight and has a 13 inch screen which is big enough for his needs.
- If working on the road you need to be aware of backups. As he goes long periods without internet access Dave has a portable back up device even though he has cloud storage just in case he loses data before he can reconnect again.
- He finds USB’s with up to 4 connections the best way of charging and avoids the need for multiple adapters
- Travel sized products like his mouse and power strips (multi boxes) can help keep weight and bag contents to a minimum
- Here Maps https://www.here.com is a great tool for downloading maps when you are online then guiding you when you are offline so you don’t need to use up your mobile data. When Dave buys a SIM card its predominantly for internet access, using skype and Google Hangouts/ Google Voice for any calls he needs to make (Voice is free to any US and Canadian numbers)