Gadgetry

I have to apologise foremost, as this post isn't strictly about our travels. I am writing it in the hope that it may be of some use to those planning a travelling trip soon.

This post is about gadgets. It's mostly about the plans we have made, considerations we had to make, and plan's of how we will live and rely on the tech we take.

Firstly is the method of communication. I will take my smartphone, a nexus 4, which I'm writing this post on now. This allows text if we have a sim card as well as email and instant message where we have WiFi, which is available almost everywhere these days.
We did consider a tablet, and normally, for most trips I believe this would be the perfect choice, but Jo and I will be wanting to update our blogs, sync our music, and do basic word processing functions using word, excel and the like as we intend to settle in Australia for a while. Due to this, we think we need a small laptop, so that will be out second piece of tech.

It's at this point I need to mention the caution that must be taken when thinking about what to take. Our last trip we took an the year old BlackBerry and a kindle, and thought this to be too much, only to find several people with their heads such in their laptops in our first hostel in cape town. These can be great tools, but hostels are very sociable places, and travelers pride themselves on chatting to each other openly no matter where they are, so to bury your head and destroy the  approachability, you stand to have a very lonely time. I remember one man who would watch films on his laptop in a hostel day and night. I spent three nights in the same room as this man and never spoke to him, whereas some of the best friends I made were on buses where we only had a chance to speak a few words at toilet breaks. The point being, if I or the other person on those bus trips stood apart with headphones in, we wouldn't have talked. I had an iPod on the last trip and will take one again, but I will only listen to it when we're closed off from others and it doesn't come across as  antisocial.

Moving slightly aside from tablets are ereaders which we took last time. These are great basic bits of kit that keep going for days, so in that way I think they are better than tablets of that is what you will be doing on them mostly. Sadly, they do eliminate the chance of book swapping which is widely available in hostels or with other travellers, which is a little unfortunate, as it means you don't end up reading some very random things you wouldn't normally try, but it does greatly reduce the weight of your bag, so swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Like many others, I have a lot of films and music on an external hard drive. I actually have two for backup purposes, both western digital passport, one being 1tb, the other being 2tb. Now I thought it would be very handy to be able to watch my films etc on my phone, so I have invested 30 quid in something new to me; a Kingston Mobilelite. This is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and about the same weight which you can plug in sd cards or usb drives. It can even power hard drives like my passports and you can access all the files via WiFi that the clever little box transmits locally itself. In theory this means if you want share photos with several people when you're up a mountain, you can send them to everyone's tablets and phones.

Final piece of tech is something that came with us last time; a mini speaker about the size of a conker. This is self powered, lasts hours, is remarkably loud for its size, and only cost about 15 quid. Best of all, it's already been around the world once and lived to tell the tale, so it's coming again. This is great for when you have a crappy guesthouse room with just a bed in it and you have a hangover, or if you're in a dorm and getting ready to go out. It can also create a more social and easy going atmosphere for getting to know people.

That's it! A quick note hopefully advise anyone out there about to embark on a trip!

TTFN

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