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Travel Advice |
| Taking your computer with you on the road or home will keep you out of the traffic jams and leave you living life as it is meant to be. |
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| Travatools is dedicated and founded on the principal of getting the IT user out of the office and the city rush hour and back into the community or where ever the user would like to be. Running this business internationally without offices cars or paper in remote and urban areas around the world. problems encountered will be posted as advise in the pages of the Travatools advice center. | |||||||
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| Rail Travel |
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Travelling by rail can mean hours waiting in
stations and even more hours sitting on the
train. This time can be used to your advantage
with some luck. Most stations, like airports I have encountered will have a wall socket or two around the waiting rooms or in the lounges and this gives an opportunity to plug in and do some work or just plug in and charge your batteries. So far no one has complained about the free use of their power. I have done this in the stations across Europe and the only time that I have thought wiser to not use this facility is in the Gare da la Est Station at night in Paris. I found only one socket in the entire station and used it during the day with no problem but there are a few people about the stations of big cities at night who seemed a bit desperate and having had my shoes stolen hours before on a Parisian Train I thought better of displaying such a valued prize. The use of a laptop on the trains itself is great. The journey is no longer a long boring trip but for at least a couple of hours while your batteries last an opportunity to catch up on letters back home or the general day to day business at hand. The main problem with working on a train for me is staying awake through the rhythmic rocking or the carriage. A spare battery is a good thing to take along so that you can double your working time on these journeys. Anyone who has seen the movie Mission Impossible will also tell you that if you are connecting to the office back home using your mobile that the probability of losing the signal in a tunnel, covered siding, or beneath the maze of overhead electric cables and interrupting your transmission is ever present. Check with the rail operator, but some first class compartments offer electric connections for the business traveller on the train. |
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| Cycling |
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The main considerations of taking your laptop on
a cycling trip are the weight and the chance of
damaging your laptop in a crash. The weight and size of your laptop may seem small and portable but if you have many accessories this can quickly add largely to the normal burden you may be carrying. I have with mine an external CD ROM drive and a case of CD's, a box of floppy disks, transformers for both the laptop and CD ROM a digital camera and microphone, all the associated cables, plus International plug adapters. Not forgetting the case itself and additional padding to help and keep it from getting Jarred in a mishap. You may also be carrying additional Battery and a mobile phone. If you plan to do much work on the road then there will be papers and perhaps manuals and such stuff. I have found that I am using an entire rucksack just to get the full functionality of the laptop which itself is thin and light. If The Compaq corporation were sponsoring me I would tell you the brand name but they are not so I will not. It is important to keep your laptop and even more important to keep your data safe, so remember to backupyour data and keep a soft layer of clothing perhaps surrounding your computer while on the road. Cycles with a heavy load are prone to falling over and mine has on a few occasions and I have come off at low speed negotiating a farm track but so far no damage. Also remember to keep your laptop dry, so a waterproof cover is important if you are going to encounter any rain along the way. |
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| Camping |
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As with cycling the size and weight of your
associated equipment is important. also keeping
the computer dry can be a problem. I have taken my laptop camping in the rainforests of the Olympic peninsula and the snowfields of the Cascade Mountains, and you cannot in these places easily find a current bush where you can recharge your battery so additional batteries may be required and they quickly add to the weight of your normal camping gear. Even if their is no rain the condensation in a poorly ventilated tent can leave a layer of moisture not only on the outside but inside your laptop. If there is a dewy mist on your screen their may also be the same on your motherboard. Make sure you let the PC dry thoroughly before switching it on. Camping in public holiday type camp sites with facilities such as games rooms and the like will mean that there is a socket where you can plug in your laptop. Staying as I write in a campsite on the river Isar in the city of Munich I am sharing a socket with a pinball machine but many sites will not have such facilities. The site here is completely coin operated for showers and even the soap dispensers but they had not thought of the possibility of someone using a spare socket and I only get looks of amusement from the staff. Well it is an amusement arcade. |
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| Security |
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Security is the most worrying problem I have
faced in my travels having taken my laptop
through some fairly insecure places. If there is
a public lockup or a site office where you can
leave your PC then take advantage of that
facility, otherwise you might find yourself
carrying your PC and equipment everywhere you go.
I took my PC to the Glastonbury Peace festival where tent sacking is rife and peace in not on the minds of the many opportunist thieves who attend such gatherings. I managed to camp in the Childrens field, by participating as a puppeteer for the Radical Arts crew but still had to have my equipment locked up in the security lockers for the whole week so that I could enjoy the festival with out the worry of who might be visiting our camp while I was enjoying the festival. If you have padded your PC against shock damage you might also consider using it as a pillow as you sleep. This is not only comfortable but the reassuring security of knowing the location of your PC will help you sleep at night. I have mentioned the misfortunes on the french rail system near to Paris when my bike and attached packs were rifled through by thieves as I travelled, I had taken the precaution of carrying my valuables in the carriage with me but I could have lost much more than a coat tent and pair of shoes had I not. The second point about security is that of data loss. Laptops can be very prone to disk damage through a sharp knock and a hard disk can be replaced but often the data and work you have put in can be more valuable in man hours than the PC itself. Take frequent backups. The loss of work is not only expensive in man hours but also a soul destroying experience which I have encountered many times. |
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| In the Bush |
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Actually using your PC outside the home or office
environment can have its own problems. Many
laptops are completely unusable out of doors due
to the glare of sunlight on the screen, so try
this out at home before you decide to take your
PC on a working trip in the wild. You may be able
to use it in a shady spot or if nothing else in
your tent. The elements are a thing of nature and are not always PC friendly. Obviously the rain and snow can be a disaster but in extreme heat also you might need to use some additional cooling aid to keep your laptop from overheating. an additional fan may be employed if you are undertaking long sessions of work. This is not only true of camping in the bush but also in hot countries where the hotel rooms are not air conditioned. Computer bugs are not always electronic. The term bug was created when a moth was fried across the relay of one of the early monster tube powered computers. I don't know how much of a problem that is today but as I was down loading pictures sitting in the bracken of the Cornish coast I observed a tiny insect crawling out of the screen of my PC. Just a thought, no damage was done but a beetle in your floppy could spell disaster and if your keyboard attracts crumbs like mine it can serve as a temptation for the insect population if your PC is left unprotected. |
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| Connecting to the Internet |
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Connecting through Cyber Cafes can be expensive
and time consuming and often their is no Other
way but a few things that I have discovered along
the way I will include on this page. In Munich and in Rouen in France I connected through Cafe's in the central part of town and they were reasonable but still the keyboard layout and the unfamiliarity made these connections rather unproductive. Also I could not use diskettes for uploading previously written emails. Check for local Libraries in the area I found that though the connection was slow in Munich for instance The price was 1 DM for 15 minutes rather than ten for an hour in the city center. Plus in the city center I was encouraged to eat and drink so it cost me 21DM plus the keyboards were so used the lettering had worn off and that made the unfamiliar lay out a real problem. I was still unable to use disks at the library which was a sealed machine but In the Falmouth Public Library I could use Disks with no problem. The American Libraries I used did not allow disks,but it was free to use with a time limit if others were waiting. The local Fourwinds Cyber Cafe did allow disks and served an exellent cup of coffee with all the refills you wanted for free. * * * * * |
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