Worth toting a laptop to Europe?
While there were times, especially when we seemed to be touring the Toronto airport by bus shuttle, that the laptop was a heavy and fragile burden, I’m very happy I took it along.
The logistics were easy. The iBook, along with many other laptops, easily deals with the voltage difference (electricity runs hotter in Europe). It’s just a matter of attaching a plug adaptor to the end of the while power block. In Lucca, I found a wireless hotspot by using the Jiwire hotspot locator, which listed the Bar Astra, about a 7 minute walk from our apartment. The Bar Astra charged 2.5 euros for 2 hours. Later, I found that the school across the street from our apartment had wide-open wireless, so I saved my Euros and my legs by sitting on the front stoop of our apartment. I wouldn’t sit there long: long enough to collect new email, send any email I’d written, post any blog entries I’d prepared, and check in on the White Sox (and the Bulls, who made a slew of trades).
In the apartment, we listened to my iTunes collection, which is basically our music library. I brought by tiny iPod Shuffle along. Those things are recharged by plugging into a USB port and sucking electricity out of a computer, so they need the mother ship. Also, they don’t hold much music (mine, the smallest one, holds about 125 songs), so it’s nice to be able to reshuffle them by reloading them off the laptop.
The iBook also holds our photo library (iPhoto), giving us the opportunity to bore new friends with pictures of our family and other trips to Italy (that happened once). More importantly, I didn’t have to worry about filling up my camera’s digital card. I brought along a tiny card reader that weighs a few ounces. This allowed me to transfer photos almost as soon as I took them.
What about the danger of letting work interfere with your vacation? Could you be too connected? Sure, that’s a danger, but I can’t say it was a problem…. this time.
Technorati tags: LaptopInst,LaptopInst06
