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The changing face of travel gadgets

Posted on 12 Nov 2009 at 15:14

Paul Ockenden looks at how the technology that trails him on holiday has changed in recent years

I can’t help reflecting on how my “going away” routine has changed over the years.

Long ago, before I owned a business or even had a senior job, holidays were pure relaxation – no phone, no email, no internet. Bliss. The only technology would have been my camera. As I climbed the corporate ladder I needed to stay in touch, even on holiday (to the chagrin of Mrs O, and countless other families).

It wasn’t always pressure from above – truth be told, I felt more comfortable knowing what was happening, and slept better knowing there were no major emergencies. My family sees the laptop in the suitcase as taking my stress on holiday with me, but I’d be more anxious if I was left in the dark – knowing everything is running smoothly is a stress buster too.

Like many others we’re holidaying in the UK this year, but not because of the Credit Crunch (it’s still more expensive to stay in a good British hotel than to fly abroad!).

My family sees the laptop in the suitcase as taking my stress on holiday with me, but I’d be more anxious if I was left in the dark

We’re returning to a hotel in Cornwall where we stayed in the mid-1990s, and my memory is still just about up to remembering what IT kit I took with me back then.

My “going-away” pack in those days included a heavy-as-a-brick NEC mobile phone, a Psion PCMCIA mobile data modem (and it was analogue since that trip pre-dated not just 3G but even GSM data), an acoustic coupler modem in case there was no mobile reception at the hotel (a good job as it turned out there wasn’t).

My laptop at that time was a chunky IBM ThinkPad 750, a real workhorse of a machine that was arm-stretchingly heavy when loaded up with its extra battery packs.

Since the ThinkPad was such a brute, I also took a Psion Series 3 machine for lightweight tasks such as note-taking – and I still have a real fondness for those Series 3 and Series 5 machines.

Aside from these work-related gadgets I also packed a couple of cameras (an SLR for serious photography and a small point-and-shoot compact as my “bag camera”), a small camcorder, a GPS receiver so we could go walking confidently across the trackless moor, and one of the first-ever speed trap detectors, which was really hi-tech at the time.

Then there was an old-school Game Boy for playing Tetris when I got bored (something that seems to happen quite a lot on my holidays), and let’s not forget the nine separate battery chargers needed to keep this gadget collection topped up with full-cream Cornish electricity.

Travelling light

So how does that mountain of kit compare to the bundle I’m going to sling into a bag in a couple of days’ time? First off, there’s the mobile.

Since I’m fortunate to have my long-term review toy box full of the latest high-end phones, I get to choose the most appropriate one to carry every day: where once it was BlackBerry all the time, nowadays it’s just as likely to be a Nokia E75 or an iPhone.

But when heading off for a break it’s back to the good old BlackBerry, because email remains so critically important to me, and that’s where the BlackBerry excels above just about every other phone. Besides, while on holiday I need the phone with the best battery life, and that immediately rules out the iPhone.

Ideally, I also need one with a high-resolution screen in case I have to preview documents and artwork or do some remote desktop tasks, and that rules out the E75.

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