Macopinion

Laptopless Traveling, Part 1

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

About a month ago an opportunity to take a trip presented itself: my cousin in New York City invited me to come visit and see a Major League Soccer game. Not content with just one game, I discovered my favorite team, reigning champs Houston Dynamo, were going to be in Los Angeles the weekend prior to the NY game, so figured out I could extend my trip to see both games with a stop to see relatives in the mid-west on the way.

Now I used to enjoy flying, but modern travel, with the extra time and hassles required for airport security, has made me drive more often than fly. Like traveling wasn't stressful enough, it's now fraught with tension, awkwardness, and lengthly waits at airports since you don't dare risk not arriving early for your flight.

Of course I always bring along a ton of electronic stuff: laptop, cords and chargers, digital camera, batteries, cell phone, iPods, etc. This adds bulk, slows me down going through security, and has me paranoid about theft (I dislike being separated from my equipment as I go through the metal detector and it goes through the x-ray machine).

But suddenly it occurred to me: this particular trip is exclusively pleasure, not business. I really didn't need a laptop, did I? Unlike past pleasure trips where I took my laptop just to keep up with email and web reading, this time I could use my iPhone for that instead!

I wouldn't have to bring a separate iPod as my iPhone is an iPod. And did I really need a separate digital camera? Sure, the iPhone's camera isn't great, but it's passable, and it wasn't like this was a photography trip. I would mostly use the camera to capture a few mementos and snapshots of relatives and such. Surely the iPhone would suffice.

The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like the perfect opportunity to test the iPhone as a laptop replacement. This was a longish trip (I'd be gone over a week); it was cross-country, with stops in several places, good for testing out the viability of AT&T's network and EDGE coverage; and since I needed to keep up with some business, this would be a good chance to see how the iPhone would work in a real world situation. Because I wouldn't have a laptop as a backup, I'd really be depending on the iPhone which would be a good test. And if, worst case, it turned out there was something important I couldn't do with the iPhone, this wasn't the longest trip -- at most a customer would have to wait a few days until I returned home and could handle their request.

I'll admit I was nervous about this decision: I can hardly remember the last time I traveled without a laptop -- it must be 15 years or more. (I've been using Mac laptops since the PowerBook 160.) Could I really survive without one?

Once resolved, however, I pressed ahead with my brave experiment. I figured out with less equipment I wouldn't have to check any bags, which would certainly make travel a lot more convenient (on my trip last spring my checked bag didn't make a connecting flight with me).

I did try to think ahead and plan so as to ensure I'd be able to do sufficient work via the iPhone. My main concerns were forwarding email to the iPhone, since I have multiple accounts and most are not set up on the iPhone, and battery life. With extensive travel usage, including music and video entertainment, would the iPhone's battery last? After all, I might be stuck for hours at airports between flights and need distraction.

I did make one concession. I wouldn't bring my MacBook, but I would bring my Alphasmart Neo keyboard. This keyboard isn't a real laptop: it only supports basic word processing and has no Internet or other applications to distract you. It's also tiny at a mere two pounds and runs forever on a few AA batteries (700 hours). With my Neo I could at least do some writing if I had some time (and believe me, the Neo's full-size keyboard is a joy to type on compared to the iPhone's cramped touchscreen virtual keyboard). In fact, I wrote most of this article on my Neo during my trip!

Since the Neo doesn't require extra cables or power supply and other accessories, I decided it wouldn't add much of a burden to security checkpoints, and it wouldn't be enough of a distraction to turn my vacation into a business trip. But other than my Neo, I'd only bring my iPhone -- no digital camera or anything else.

Next Time: Marc starts his trip and reports on the results of his experiment.

macopinion@designwrite.com