Road Tools
You need to keep in the loop when you're on the go. And these 30-plus travel-worthy products, accessories, services, and strategies can help.Carla Thornton
Carla Thornton is a contributing editor for PC World.
Dog sledders. Extreme backpackers. Sherpas. Now those are folks who know how to pack for a road trip. On your next out-of-towner, you may not have to worry about suffering frostbite, but road warriors do have to obey their own code of survival: staying productive.
According to research firm Gartner, 45 percent of today's U.S. workforce uses some type of mobile device. Add to this number the people who occasionally work at home or who squeeze in work during a long commute on the train or ferry. One result of this mass exodus from the office is a raft of mobile products and services clamoring for a spot in your travel survival kit.
To help you make the most of your time out of the office, here are more than 30 tools you can use.
Laptop Luxury
Best Buys: Toshiba's Tecra M1 (left) and IBM's ThinkPad X31 (in its docking station).
As the reviewer for the Top 15 Notebooks chart, I can assure you that address book-equipped cell phones and keyboard-decked PDAs have not replaced the notebook. For most people, a laptop is crucial to a successful business trip.
I looked at several notebooks and ranked them in a chart, split into two groups--ultraportables and midweights. If light weight is essential, you have two options: a small ultraportable with an optical drive built in, or one that attaches to a docking station to give you access to an optical drive. Ultraportables have better processors and bigger hard drives than ever before, but cramped keyboards and limited built-in drives remain causes for concern.
Though IBM's ThinkPad X31 lacks an internal optical drive, it's my choice for an ultraportable: You get nearly 5 hours of battery life, a full set of connections, and a great keyboard, in a 3.7-pound notebook that costs $1698 with the $199 docking station.
Many users like the versatility of a slightly larger, midweight notebook. "I got rid of my office desktop and replaced it with a 5.6-pound Dell Inspiron 600m with a 14.1-inch screen," says Joe Davis, a Dallas oil and gas consultant. Having one machine makes working remotely a seamless experience for Davis. "I was always leaving something at home and had terrible times syncing files when I got back. No more," he exults.
Among midweight notebooks, my current favorite is Toshiba's Tecra M1, which boasts a 6.7-hour battery life and offers upgrade options through its multipurpose drive bay.
Make sure the notebook you choose has an Intel Pentium M processor. This CPU routinely runs faster and is a better steward of battery life than the older Pentium 4-M chip in PC World's tests. As for AMD processors, we've looked at some ultraportables that use the low-voltage mobile Athlon XP-M chip, but they delivered merely average performance and battery life.
Also, get 802.11b Wi-Fi for wireless Internet access; even if you don't use the feature now, chances are you will eventually (see "Which Way to the Internet?").
Spring for a notebook that at least has a CD burner. You won't regret being able to back up large amounts of data or to burn a music CD. Rewritable drives often come as DVD-ROM/CD-RW combination models at little increase in price.
For extralong battery life, check to see if the vendor sells a high-capacity power pack. Your alternative is a battery add-on such as Valence Technology's N-Charge Power System. Weighing less than 2 pounds, the charger lies under the bottom of a notebook and (according to the vendor) provides from 5 ($199) to 10 ($299) extra hours.
If you need more ports than your laptop currently provides, consider getting a universal port replicator like Belkin's $125 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 DockStation. The device is 1 inch tall and weighs less than a pound, including its cables and power adapter. It has two USB 2.0 ports, a parallel port, a 10/100 ethernet port, a serial port, and a VGA port for monitors. And it will work with any notebook, unlike the device-specific docking stations that computer companies sell as options for their PCs.
Features Comparison: Top Road-Ready Notebooks (chart)
Road Safety
Leaving your notebook lying around unsecured is like waving a bottle of Gatorade at the finish line of the Boston Marathon--you can bet someone's going to grab it. Experts say that any sort of physical barrier is enough to thwart most thieves. For that you can't beat Belkin's $34 K100 Notebook Security Lock; it includes a 6-foot, galvanized cable and a set of two keys. You just loop the cable around the leg of an immovable object, such as a bolted-down hotel table, and then plug the hardware end into the security slot on the side or back of your notebook. You also get an anchor plate for screwing a cable eyelet onto a flat surface.
Accidents are inevitable if you travel a lot, so consider extending your notebook's warranty or upgrading to a plan that covers accidents. Check your homeowner's or renter's insurance policies, too, to see whether they cover accidental damage to computers. Having proper coverage could save your neck if you drop your notebook or if it falls victim to a fellow traveler's clumsiness.
"I've lost two machines due to accidents on airplanes," says consultant Joe Davis. "One person sitting next to me spilled their drink. The person in front reclined and torqued the screen. For my latest notebook, I upgraded to a three-year warranty that covers accidents."
Also keep in mind the public-security measures you'll encounter in airports. See "Tips for Traveling With Tech Gear" for advice.
Desktop in a Key Chain
Essential tools (clockwise from left): Belkin USB 2.0 DockStation, 01 Communique I'm InTouch, Forward Solutions Migo.
I love my desktop. It has my files, e-mail, and Internet settings arranged just the way I like. That's why I hate to leave it when I travel. What I really want is an easier way to set up my laptop to operate like my desktop while I'm on the road.
Forward Solutions' Migo is a USB flash drive ($150 for 128MB, $200 for 256MB) that makes parting with your desktop easier--at least for Outlook and IE users. The Migo has data management and synchronization software on board. When you plug it into a USB port on your office computer, it can copy the desktop (and some interface settings), Outlook in-box, favorites, and selected files. Plug it into another PC, type in your password, and you'll see a copy of your office PC.
Plugged back into my office machine, the Migo syncs my e-mail and any new favorites I've saved on the other PC; then it updates files, including folder structures. Even with the convenience of the Migo, however, I hesitate to abandon my notebook altogether. A destination PC that has a corrupted in-box, as one of my test machines did, may reject the Migo.
M-Systems takes a similar approach: Its $60 (64MB) to $290 (512MB) DiskOnKey Classic 2.0 USB flash drive allows you to copy your files. Once you install the company's free, downloadable MyKey applet on the drive, the program creates a hidden partition where you can password-protect files and hide them from other users' view. Alas, it's more trouble than it's worth. You have to launch the on-board applet every time you want to see your password-protected files. And to reallocate space, you have to wipe the entire key. Argh.
Remote Control
Tickets? check. Carry-on? Check. The presentation that could elevate you from office nobody to company hero? Oops. Still sitting on the PC in your cubicle.
The problem with taking a subset of your desktop on a trip is that you still might forget a file. One solution is remote-control software, which lets you view your desktop over the Internet from another PC so you can work as if you'd never left your office chair.
The latest user-friendly packages--01 Communique's I'm InTouch, Expertcity's GoToMyPC 4, and Laplink Software's LapLink Everywhere 2--make setting up a remote connection a breeze. Install the software on the machine you want to control (the host). Then, on the controlling PC (the client), go to the vendor's Web site, enter a password, and wait a few moments for a temporary Java applet to download and display the host's screen. And while I enjoy hanging out at WhatIsMyIP.com as much as the next person, here's the best part about these three apps: You don't have to supply your host's IP address or reset any of its ports, as you do with some earlier packages; a central server handles the peer-to-peer connection for you. All three programs even hurdled my firewall with ease.
Because you don't have to install any client software, you can work from any device capable of browsing--laptops, cell phones, and Internet terminals at airports and in coffee shops.
I'll opt for the $99 I'm InTouch the next time I go out of town and want to be able to access anything on my office PC. Screen refreshes were a bit sluggish over my 56-kbps dial-up connection when I switched applications, but overall response was brisk: I never had to wait for the screen to catch up to my keystrokes. Transferring files--useful for working on documents locally and then sending them back to the host--was awkward but functional. Security is the only issue. As with all remote-control packages, you must leave your host PC running, and I'm InTouch has no safeguards such as blanking the screen of the host PC.
Expertcity's GoToMyPC 4 works similarly but also offers a download-on-demand viewer for maximizing the control window to nearly full screen, and it lets you set up a local printer to print directly from the host. You can even mark the screen for editing or illustration purposes. Unfortunately, as a small-business person I can't afford GoToMyPC's $180 annual fee. Bigger companies may want to check out the program's corporate versions.
I also tried LapLink Everywhere 2, a Web-based remote-control service; unfortunately, it exhausted my patience with sluggish performance. On top of that, it costs $120 per year for unlimited remote access. For more-complicated needs, such as controlling multiple machines and customizing a full range of security options (including blocking certain files or users), I recommend the $100 LapLink Gold 11. Like other professional-level packages aimed at help desks, it must be installed on both host and client systems.
LapLink Gold and its rival, Symantec's PCAnywhere 11, offer excellent file transfer capabilities for working on files locally and synchronizing them with the host. PCAnywhere is expensive ($200), and for me it performed at glacial speed over dial-up. But that was probably because it transmits files in up to 32-bit color, which would allow me to crank out hi-res graphics over a remote connection.
If you like to tweak programs, try VNC for remote control. It's free, speedy, and customizable--but its interface is spartan, and it can't transfer files.
Versatile Handhelds and Cell Phones
Most mobile workers say they can't live without their cell phones. No doubt you've seen these folks with phone pods glued to their ears the second their plane lands.
Mark McWhinney, founder of a software load-testing company in Mountain View, California, says that his camera phone comes in handy when he least expects it. "Now when I'm at a party, I don't say, 'Heck, I wish I had a camera.'" His Sprint PCS Vision Sanyo 5300 holds 18 pictures. "Every so often, I push a button and upload them to my photo journal on Sprint PCS's Web site. Or I look up Grandma in my Outlook contacts on the phone, push the e-mail button, and send her pictures of the kids." (See McWhinney's profile.)
I like the Motorola V600 camera phone best; it can store more than 100 photos and can play downloaded videos. To read about the latest models, see "Picture-Perfect Phones."
If you find that cell phones have too few features to keep your schedule organized, or that the dialpad is too cumbersome for e-mailing, consider a PDA/phone hybrid. PalmOne's Treo 600 wraps three functions into one 5.9-ounce device, working as a Palm handheld, a phone, and a camera. It costs between $500 and $700, depending on the carrier.
If you want an affordable, Web-enabled PDA that has no phone capabilities, Dell's $379 Axim X3i is a good buy. This 5-ounce Pocket PC unit has 64MB of RAM, a bright screen, and an easy-to-set-up Wi-Fi connection. (For more on PDAs, see Top 10 PDAs.)
Staying Juiced
Take charge: Valence Technology N-Charge Power System (left) and Instant Power 3in1 Charger Kit.
Nothing bums me out like grabbing my Casio PDA on the way out the door and discovering that it's as dead as roadkill. How many times can I forget to charge the little devil?
Often enough to make me stock up on Instant Power's $20 3in1 Charger Kit. It includes a small, nonrechargeable box carrying zinc-based fuel cells that work when exposed to air. With the appropriate adapter, the Instant Power kit charges the batteries of such small devices as PDAs, cell phones, and cameras when you're away from an outlet. A replacement cartridge costs $10.
An alternative is Keyspan's $30 retractable USB cable. It lets you charge your cell phone or PDA when you plug it into your notebook, so you don't need to hunt down a power outlet (at least not for the smaller devices).
Pack it up: APC TravelPower case (top), Belkin K100 lock, Keyspan retractable USB cable.
Armed with all this gear, you'll need an all-purpose bag. American Power Conversion's $120 TravelPower Backpack is a versatile, 3-pound bag with a padded compartment to hold a notebook, as well as pockets for a cell phone, a PDA, and a bundled universal adapter. Equipped with two USB ports (cables are $20 extra apiece) and a laptop cable, the 1.8-pound adapter allows you to charge three devices simultaneously from one power source (car, plane, or wall outlet). A roller-bag version of the TravelPower is available for the same price.
Tuned In
Music makes the miles fly by for many a business traveler, including systems engineer Jim Anderson of upstate New York (see Anderson's profile). Every week he loads up his Compaq IPaq PA-2 MP3 player with about 20 different songs--everything from Avril Lavigne to Mike and the Mechanics, most of which are borrowed from his kids. Anderson loves the $99 Shure E2c no-battery-needed earphones he bought to go with the IPaq. "They cost two-thirds less than powered ones and still offer fantastic sound quality and noise reduction--they double as earplugs."
For higher-quality headphones, step up to the $300 Bose Quiet Comfort II (see "Tech Visionaries"), the first headphones to work without an external power box. They cut out the drone of airplane engines and the wails of crying children. Of course, they also prevent you from hearing the flight attendant ask you what you want to drink.
Don't care for the selection of music on the plane? Invest in an MP3 player such as Samsung's $399 YP-910GS. You'll get a 20GB hard drive, an FM radio, and an FM transmitter for playing music through car stereo speakers. The YP-910GS works with the Napster music service and can record from the radio or a line-in input.
If I'm not lugging too much other stuff, I'll bring Creative's $60 Sound Blaster MP3+, a first-aid kit for audio-impaired notebooks (in other words, most notebooks). The black-and-silver box weighs only 4 ounces and comes with a generous combination of audio ports: two lines in, two lines out, as well as optical-in and optical-out connections. This would let me record from someone's MiniDisc player, for instance, or add a set of analog or digital speakers.
Which Way to the Internet?
Richard Bilancia, an IT cost management consultant in Littleton, Colorado, longs for a better way to access e-mail on the road. He uses Bluetooth to give his Compaq Tablet PC TC1000 a Web connection via a Nokia 3650 phone with T-Mobile service. But the speed seldom exceeds 28.8 kbps. Bilancia says a fast, wireless network "would be exciting."
One option for speedier Web access is public hot spots. To take advantage of these, you'll need an 802.11b Wi-Fi-equipped laptop, PDA, or other device. Today, most notebooks have embedded antennas and a receiver on a Mini-PCI card located in a bottom compartment. You can add 802.11b capability to your existing notebook with a PC Card adapter for about $40. Or you can use newer 802.11g equipment, which works with 802.11b systems. In any case, the faster access won't do you any good when you browse the Web, because the broadband connections that public hot spots use are relatively slower than the transfer speed of even an 11b network.
When you pass within 200 to 300 feet of a hot spot, your device will announce that it has found an access point to the Internet. By the time the wireless signal passes through walls, furniture, and other objects, 802.11b speed slows to about half the ballyhooed 11 mbps.
Regrettably, there are few hot spots available, and no single billing plan permits you to roam from one area to another. For instance, you can't go online in a Starbucks (served by T-Mobile) and continue surfing as you walk next door into a Marriott Hotel (served by Boingo). Instead, you must disconnect from the first service and reconnect to the second--and pay for both, $30 and $22 per month, respectively.
Just over 71,000 public-access hot spots are available worldwide now, but Gartner expects that number to mushroom to over 150,000 in 2005. For a list of hot spots, try PCWorld.com's new service powered by Jiwire. Most hot spots are in cafés such as Starbucks. Airports, the dream hot spot for many users because of the built-in downtime, continue to resist Wi-Fi because it's costly to implement, according to IDC analyst Keith Waryas.
"Now [airports] have the expense of beefing up security to deal with, so services like Wi-Fi are not high on the list," Waryas says. For widespread acceptance, fast wireless will need to be more heavily pushed by the cellular carriers.
AT&T, Sprint PCS, Verizon, and other carriers already offer their customers extra-cost services that can sustain transfer rates of 20 to 90 kbps--equal to or a little better than dial-up. That's an improvement on the 14.4-kbps modems that older phones carry, but it's not a killer app in Waryas's view.
"Cell phones work everywhere, unlike 802.11b, but the networks aren't ready for prime time: You won't hit even the 56-kbps dial-up experience every time. Sometimes you can't get the signal; sometimes it's slow. Is the extra [bandwidth] really worth the extra $60 you might pay every month?" Waryas asks.
The picture could change when Verizon Wireless rolls out a nationwide third-generation service capable of speeds up to 300 kbps. (For more information on 3G, turn to "Cellular Nets Reach DSL Speed.")
The new broadband-class speed could set the stage for faster development of all-in-one devices capable of communication, information, and entertainment, experts believe. "When you get over 100 kilobits, that changes everything," says Waryas.
One for the Road
Someday we'll all enjoy blazing Internet access anywhere, power outlets wherever we need them, and maybe even video conferencing so good we won't need to travel.
But until that fabulous time arrives, I'd like to offer this toast to every traveler who pounds the pavement or dents a seat cushion to serve a business: May your laptop be light, your files zipped up tight, and all your batteries long-lived.
More Is More: Light Notebooks Don't Fit All (profile)
Photograph by Marc Simon
"I've never really understood the need for light weight," says McWhinney. "If you're a road warrior, you need to take the office with you."
The Satellite P25-S609 carries a 3-GHz Pentium 4 processor, a DVD-RAM burner, an 80GB hard drive, and 1GB of memory. But McWhinney's favorite feature is the unit's built-in TV tuner, which he uses to record the news before leaving his hotel room. At lunch, he replays it on his notebook's 17-inch screen.
The Toshiba accounts for over a third of the 25 pounds of gadgets McWhinney totes--but that's okay. "I just throw the bag over my shoulder," he says. The 2-hour battery life doesn't matter because the notebook is usually plugged in.
When working at home, he stays in touch with the office via Yahoo Messenger IM, WebEx conferencing software, and his company's Cisco VPN, which he finds is faster than his personal copy of PCAnywhere. "[From my home office, Cisco's VPN] lets me work on PCs in San Diego, and it saves my client, 24 Hour Fitness, $1000 in travel expenses."
Business Travel Dossier: Mark McWhinney
Miles per Year: 20,000, on weekly flights between Northern and Southern California.
Favorite Way to Connect: Sprint PCS Vision Sanyo 5300 camera phone with built-in flash and 144-kbps Internet connection. (This also provides a fast wireless connection for the laptop.)
Favorite Gadget: Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 Webcam, which McWhinney uses to do video chats with his 3- and 5-year-old daughters.
Least Favorite but Necessary Item: Power adapters.
Most Useless Gadget: Palm V, whose Graffiti handwriting recognition software proved too hard to use.
Next Gadget Purchase: "Probably something wireless."
High on Wi-Fi: Internet Access to Go (profile)
Photograph by Marc Simon
He relies on Web sites like WiFinder, word of mouth, and "just looking around" to find his next hit of Wi-Fi. Subscribing to a single service is too limiting, so Anderson plays the field, paying $10 at the airport for Wayport one day and surfing for free at a spot such as New York City's Bryant Park the next. He won't settle down with one Wi-Fi service until providers come up with a better billing system. "They need to get their act together as far as allowing people to roam."
Back home in rural upstate New York, where broadband is not yet available, Anderson gets only a 28.8-kbps dial-up connection. Some days, he packs up his laptop and drives to a Starbucks in nearby Albany to take advantage of the T-Mobile Wi-Fi connection in the café.
Anderson's final tip: When traveling on business, consider renting a car with GPS installed, as it will "come in handy [for] getting to hard-to-find locales."
Business Travel Dossier: Jim Anderson
Miles per Year: 100,000, around the northeastern United States.
Favorite Way to Connect: Free broadband at Marriott hotels and in meeting rooms with ethernet jacks; Wi-Fi everywhere else.
Favorite Gadget: Compaq's IPaq PA-2 MP3 player with Shure's E2c earphones.
Least Favorite but Necessary Item: The 10-pound-plus company notebook, a Dell Latitude C840, whose 15-inch screen eliminates the need for a projector.
Most Useless Gadget: Palm III. "Now I keep everything on my Web-enabled Motorola T720 cell phone with service from Verizon, which includes e-mail."
Next Gadget Purchase: 40GB Apple IPod.
Print Remotely
A big frustration of business travel--especially for owners of pocket devices like a BlackBerry or Palm--is finding a way to print. Are you satisfied to fool with cables, print drivers, disks, or file transfers when you need a hard copy now?
For C. Joseph Drayton, director of the Idaho Office of Consumer Affairs and Technical Assistance, a partial solution to this problem was to buy a portable printer, the Canon BubbleJet I70. Printouts cost 60 cents a page (for black-and-white text), but the device weighs less than 4 pounds.
Peripatetic professionals who don't want to schlep yet another piece of equipment have another option: a Web printing service. PrinterOn and PrintMe offer an alternative to packing a portable printer or chaperoning a disk to the hotel business center. They let you print or fax from any device capable of sending e-mail, including laptops, PDAs, BlackBerry units, and cell phones. You just upload the document and retrieve the printed copy at a designated spot.
So far, Web printing is available mainly in upscale hotels as a free or low-cost in-room service. Guests go to a special Web page and upload the document they want to print. The service sends a confirmation number, which guests present when they go to pick up the printed document in the business center.
Also counted among PrintMe's 600 locations are 17 airports and a smattering of coffee shops. At these public print stations, you can expect to pay anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar per printed page. Most of PrinterOn's 150 service outlets are situated in Hilton Garden Inns.
Internet printing may be slick, but it isn't perfect. Some of my document's fonts were not faithfully rendered; and when I tried to pick up my document at the PrinterOn service at the San Mateo, California, Hilton Garden Inn, my page took an hour to print because several other guests' print jobs were sitting in the queue ahead of mine.
Mapping Anywhere
Driving myself to a meeting, I can get lost faster than a suitcase ticketed for Portland, Indiana. That's a great reason to invest in a Global Positioning System device. Thales Navigation's $1299 Magellan RoadMate 700 and DeLorme's $290 Earthmate GPS Receiver provide you-are-here accuracy wherever you are.
The Magellan Roadmate 700 is about the size of a large paperback, and it doesn't need a notebook or PDA to display maps. It sits in a bracket that you mount to your car's dashboard, and gets power from the cigarette lighter. When you tap in the destination address using an on-screen keyboard, the screen shows a map with step-by-step directions. If you deviate from the route, it will recalculate how to get back. One drawback: The aerial view doesn't list cities as reference, so it's hard to tell where you're going.
The Earthmate GPS Receiver connects to a PDA or a laptop preloaded with mapping software. With the Receiver's Bluetooth connection, I beamed mapping info to my Bluetooth-enabled notebook. Check out "Find the Way With GPS" for more pointers in the right direction.