David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
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The Traveler’s Toolbox – Update #4
“What do you have in this thing?” is what colleagues often ask me when they attempt
to lift up my flight carry-on bag (my “personal item” as it were.) Over the last few of years I published a couple of blogs
that listed a number of devices and tools that I keep with me when I
travel. Things change rapidly in
technology, and my bag has a bunch of new items this year, so here is an
update.
· I Finally Gave-Up The Wires – I have always been very particular about flying
and wearing headphones. The Bose and
equivalent over the ear and/or on-ear, noise canceling headphones sound great,
but they can get quite uncomfortable. If
you’re like me, airplanes get hot and these headphones make my ears too
warm. They also get in the way if you
are a side sleeper or have easily messed-up hair. I used my Sony noise cancelling earbuds
happily for years, bit the wires were always a pain. Then Plantronics came out with this new Voyager 6200
and I ditched the wires. They are meant
to be worn around the neck, and have earbuds on attached wires for easy
insertion and removal. These are just an
awesome tool. The noise cancelling can
be turned on or off, the sound is terrific, and they also work as a headset if
a call comes in. Are they the best
sounding headset I ever had? No, but I
think of them as I do any multi-function tool.
If it gets me 90% of a number of functions then it’s better than
carrying multiple devices that each do 100%, and the convenience of draping
them on my neck and forgetting about them unless I need them is awesome. I hope they produce a next generation of the
unit that has a “duck” button, so one can hear outside sounds without removing
the earbud, and an ability to take a wired input as well. On those rare flights that still have an IFE
system I have to use a portable Bluetooth
transmitter which is a bit of a pain and doesn’t reliably hold a charge for
extended periods of time. A simple wired
input jack would make that unnecessary.
· Carrying a Back-Up of
Everything – Many people today keep documents in various cloud storage
systems. I just can’t bring myself to do
that. With all the failures and breaches
we read about daily I personally don’t feel cloud storage of documents, photos
or anything else is safe. I happily use
cloud services for real-time collaboration, but the only drive I trust is one I
can hold. When I travel I keep this
back-up with me on a small portable drive.
The Seagate Backup Plus
Slim 2TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive is small, light, and can hold
every document I ever worked on. I make
sure my PC’s hard drive is synced with my home NAS, and then with this little
external drive, using a piece of shareware called FolderMatch. Then when I travel, if anything happens to my
PC I can use anyone else’s – or a new one I’d buy – and still have all my
files. I find it to be a foolproof
system for storing everything I need.
This drive is easily under $100 for a two terabyte version, and is now
available in a five terabyte version for not that much more.
· More Charging Ports – I previously recommended
this little gem from Tech-Matte with
five ports and the ability to push 2.4 amps out of four of them as a single charger
to carry. It is still functioning well
(but no longer available to purchase), so I’ve now switched to an Anker PowerPort 6 -
60W/12A 6-Port USB Charger to get an extra port. And, if that’s not enough for you, they even
have a ten port unit available. I
find I only need to carry one of these (and the combination PC power supply, USB charger I previously
recommended in one of my product reviews) for trips of any length, and I
can charge everything (iPad, iPhone, spare iPhone battery cases, Headsets, Apple
Watch) just fine.
· Ready To Present – I am often asked to
present at conferences and seminars.
Many times I’m not able to use my own PC, but instead have to use one
that’s been placed in the room by the organizer – and 80% of the time the
organization that made the arrangements forgot to order a wireless
presenter. I find it easy to just carry
my own everywhere I go. My PC power supply bag has my PC charger, a wireless
mouse, a few tiny USB drives, and the Doosl Wireless presenter. I like this one because it has a sliding
on-off switch that can’t accidentally be turned-on and drained, and it has all
the features I need (PowerPoint forward and backward and a laser pointer.)
And I still carry that 2
ounce bottle of hand sanitizer I mentioned in previous updates in my bag. With all the continued news of pandemics, flu
viruses, outbreaks, etc. I’ve become a little paranoid about the shared
surfaces I use in airplanes and rental cars.
The first thing I do when I board or get in the driver’s seat is take
out the bottle, squirt a blob into my hands and wipe-down the steering wheel,
gear-shift, knobs, tray-table, armrests, etc.
I’m not really sure how much it helps but it does make me feel
better.
Please
let me know if you find these tips useful and/or if you have any of your
own. I’ll keep putting them together for
future blogs.
This article was written by David Danto and
contains solely his own, personal opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.