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(Continued from page 1) charge your other devices and so avoid having
to carry separate power converters. However,
Begin by seeing what you can do with just a this will take more time than using a charger;
smart phone. If you are going overseas where check before you leave home.
roaming charges can be high, assume it’s con- If your hotel has wired Ethernet in the room you
figured not to make calls. You can still use it for can use a travel router to provide better service
communications by using a Web communication than Wi-Fi___33. Some hotels limit the number
service, such as Skype, when you are at a Wi-Fi of devices you can connect to their Wi-Fi___33
hotspot. Its music player and e-book reader can or charge separately for each one. If you con-
entertain you en route, provided of course that nect your devices to Wi-Fi___33 through a trav-
you load the media before you leave home. It el router, shown in Figure 1, configured as a re-
will also let you read your e-mail and surf the peater, that is the only device registered, re-
Web, although its small screen makes these gardless of how many devices connect through
less efficient than using a PC. You can also in- it. See my article on travel routers in the Novem-
stall apps to track your credit and debit card ex- ber 2014 Bytes, available at http://
penses, safeguard your passwords, and calcu- www.bcug.com/.
late currency conversions. Most cell phones in-
clude a GPS, but by default they continually
download maps from the network. If you want to
use this feature where you don’t have cell-phone
service, you must first download and install
maps into your mapping app, such as Locus
Map for Android. (Be aware that mapping apps
can be complex and configuring them may re-
quire some work; start this well before you
leave.) Finally, it has a camera to save your
memories. Of course, you must install and con-
figure the needed apps and become comfortable
with them before you leave home. Expect to
spend considerable time to get this right.

Thus, with a properly configured smart phone
you can send and receive messages, access the
Internet, navigate, secure your sensitive data,
and take photos. However, you may decide that
you want additional equipment to escape the
phone’s limitations and are willing to accept the
additional baggage, the extra delays at security Figure 1. Travel Router.
checks, the added effort to safeguard the equip- A pocket GPS with extra replaceable batteries
ment, and the financial risk of losing it. will help you find your way longer than a smart
phone and may provide more features and offer
Small and light laptops are not expensive but try
to make yours do jobs besides the obvious e- more choice of maps. (Use it before you leave
mail and Web surfing. For example, you can up- so you can find how long it will operate on a set
load data from your camera, cell phone, and of batteries.) Many free maps of areas all over
GPS, so that you retain the data if one is lost or (Continued on page 5)
damaged. You can also use its USB ports to

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