TRAVEL TECH, Lightening the Load

Multitasking devices and smart accessories can help prevent gadget overload.

When you're packing for a trip there's always the Big Decision: what to take with you? Now that we have gadgets and gizmos to factor in, this process has only gotten harder. The problem if further compounded by the arrival of innumerable accessories for your electronic devices, meaning that the decision about whether to bring, say, your iPod then elicits another round of decisions about which iPod-related bits and pieces you might bring along to keep your music player company. I'm not claiming to be the most efficient packer, usually bringing too many extras or not enough, but I've got a few suggestions that may help you, whether you're about to embark on a business trip, a weekend holiday, or a round-the-world tour.

First, think weight, I recall watching a presentation by a guy who walked solo across the North Pole, and his most memorable piece of advice was not about avoiding thin ice or polar bears, but rather about packing light. He took his own counsel seriously, even sawing off the end of his toothbrush to save a dozen grams.

Of course, there are some things you wouldn't dream of bringing on a trip unless you had the services of sherpas or door-to-door porters. Wide-screen TVs spring to mind, but so do the bulkier external speakers for iPods and other music players. (Which is not to say that iPod speakers don't have their place: Logitech's new AudioStation Express has become a fixture on my desk, and will run off batteries, making it portable enough if you're just headed out to the pool or beach. I just wouldn't want it in my carry-on luggage-it's four times as heavy as my iPod). But when it comes to smaller items, deciding what to pack can be a quandary, not least because many of us are poor judges of weight. Nokia's N91 phone, for example, contains a mini hard drive and sports a sleek metal finish, making it somehow feel heavier than its bulkier but less metallic cousin, the N92. Weigh them on a kitchen scale, however, and the N91 is a good 60 grams lighter. This may not sound like much but it all adds up, particularly when you consider all the things that come with it, such as adapters and batteries. An ordinary digital camera, for example, may weigh only 100 grams, but the charger can add half that weight again.

We're still stuck in a world, you see, where gadgets come with their own unique chargers/adapters, an absurdity that is matched only by the profusion of proprietary batteries. We end up lugging a whole army of these things around with us. Thanks to battery makers like Moixa, however, this looks set to change: the British company has already come out with AA batteries (see www.usbcell.com) that you can recharge from a USB socket on your laptop, and plans to do the same thing for other sizes of battery soon, including those for your mobile phone and camera. In the meantime, arm yourself with multitasking adapters: Targus (www.targus.com), for example, offers adapters that will charge and run a range of devices, from phones to laptops. Also look for cables that remove the need for a charger altogether. For my Treo 650 smartphone, I saved myself 100 grams by buying a US$15 USB synchronization cable that also happens to recharge the phone from my laptop. Of course, I have to bring my laptop along too.

That said, laptops are getting lighter. Acer, Lenovo, Compaq, and Fujitsu all make what are called ultralights (formerly known as sub notebooks), which can weigh anywhere between one and two kilograms. Then there are even lighter units, like the OQO (www.oqo.com) model 01+, a sort of mini-tablet PC weighing 400 grams. They're still a bit pricey, though don't expect to pay under US$1,000. But for me their biggest downside is the lack of a decent keyboards; indeed, some have slide-out pads that would be more at home on a smart phone than a laptop. The OQO 01+, for example, comes with a keyboard so small that your fingers will cramp after just a few lines of typing.

This is where an external keyboard can make all the difference. As you know from past columns, I swear by using a smartphone or PDA (personal digital assistant) with an external keyboard-it's still the best way to get the job done. The same holds true for ultralight laptops. My preference would be the ThinkOutside Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard (www.thinkoutside.com), which, despite its cumbersome name and reliance on the cranky Bluetooth wireless standard, is as sleek and cool as a slim cigarette case. It also works with a number of different gadgets, including many phones. Oh, and it weighs only 140 grams.

One sure way to save yourself from gadget overload is to limit your devices to those that perform multiple functions. Your laptop, for example, makes a great DVD player; just remember to bring along the DVD drive and an audio two-for-one adapter so that you can share the movie with your companion. I'm no great fan of Nokia phones as music devices, but they'll do in a pinch if I don't want to bring my iPod with me. With an external card aboard, the Treo 650 too has enough space to include a few hours of music, podcasts, or audiobooks - and that's on top of important stuff like email, Internet browsing, and word processing.

I can understand that for some folk under the age of 21 this kind of thing makes sense - it may even be de rigueur in certain circles - but I am not sure about the rest of us. If the trend broadens, there's a danger we'll have to consider not only what gadgets to take with us, and what accessories for which gadgets to take with us, but also what clothing to take with the accessories that go with the gadgets that we take with us. It's enough to make you want to stay home.


About Writer:
Jeremy Wagstaff is a technology columnist based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has been writing his occasionally serious "Loose Wire" column for the past five years; it currently appears in The Wall Street Journal Asia. Wagstaff can be reached on his blog www.loosewireblog.com, or write to him with your own travel-tech tips at loosewire@gmail.com