Sometimes, against all odds, technology just works

I recently returned from a vacation break in Hawaii. Apart from the usual vacation stuff, this was my first attempt at a tech-enabled trip. Included in the high tech adventure was my new Dell 700m laptop (still going great since its purchase last November). The laptop was used for checking email, web surfing, archiving photos (from my aging, but still reliable Olympus C-2020 digital camera), as a DVD player, and it was also stuffed full of almost every CD in WMA format.

Since the 700m speakers are basically crap and I wasn't sure what kind of audio equipment our room would have I brought along a Belkin FM transmitter and 3.5 stereo to phono cable. Both got used but the latter proved best as it allowed the laptop to be used away from the CD player/radio. The Belkin TuneCast II transmitter was purchased just before leaving for Hawaii and worked out well as it could be tuned over the entire FM range and used two AAA batteries and smart power controls that power off when no audio is present. The only problem I had was that the car power adpater didn't work with the American rental car due to some physical mismatch of the 12V socket and the adapter plug. Transmit range was at least 10ft indoors and good inside the car, occasionally the transmitter needed to moved around in the car to get clear reception, but it was never really a big problem.

Mobile tunes were provided by copying files to a venerable FrontierLabs NexII MP3/WMA player that is going great and with the addition of a bigger compact flash card will probably last for several more years. That's the way I like my technology - stuff that just keeps going and going until its obsolete. The FrontierLabs guys were smart enough to make the storage removable and based on a standard that would be around for a long time. I bought it with a 256MB CF card, and now a 1GB card is just $70 or so. The NexII also uses standard AA batteries and is actually designed for NiMH AA rechargeables so I never have to worry about some builtin recharageable battery dying after a few hundred cycles (which could easily be about one year) and then having to send it off for expensive servicing. I'll *NEVER* by an device that uses a builtin proprietary rechargeable battery - I'm prepared to buy a new proprietary battery, but not to send off a device to have one replaced, that's nuts.

Connectivity to the Internet was provided for free by my fantastic ISP, sonic.net whose DSL accounts include free dialup backup that works anywhere in the USA. I was able to get a 56kbps dialup connection at local call rates which from where I was staying was free. I was then able to VPN back home when necesary (although the VPN connection was somewhat flakey for reasons yet to be determined). The only network connectivity hiccup was when my home server got disconnected on the last day due to the WiFi access point serving it accidentally losing its power connection. Until then I was able to monitor our dynamic duo of cats using a motion triggered web camera, downloading short .avi files of their activity when they decided to camp in front of the camera or wander by it.

As a backup for connectivity I took the cable to connect my Motorola V300 phone to my computer which on my current cellular plan would have provided a 5kbps dialup connection for free during in the evenings (after 9pm), or a 30kbps GPRS connection (for email only due to port blocking that T-Mobile does on my cheapo data plan) the rest of the time. However since my Sonic dialup worked so well and I never took the computer on the road with us (since we had the NexII player for the car) there was no need to ever use the mobile phone backup. While on the road I was surprised to find that T-Mobile had excellent connectivity in most parts of Hawaii including GPRS connectivity so if I really wanted to I could check email using the builting IMAP/POP email client in my Motorola V300.

Overall my tech enabled vacation was a positive experience. It wasn't even really much to lug since its a compact and light laptop (4.5 lbs) and the small case I have for it easily contained all the extra gadgets and cables I needed for connectivity. Along with my digital camera, a few DVDs, extra batteries and a AA NiMH charger it didn't add much at all to my total baggage. The benefit was access to all my music collection, a handy DVD player, instant viewing and archiving of all the photos and movies taken on the digital camera, and of course email, web access and cat monitoring for free!