Getting ready for a conference or trade show always get me excited. There’s the thought of the new gadgets, the discussions, meeting with contacts (I’ll be catching up with the MeetMobility and NetbookNews teams while I’m there; @jkkmobile, @sascha_p, @joannastern) and of course, the thrill of the pack. The scout in me never ceases to get excited about packing my gadget bag.
Preparing for a conference or expo is important when it’s a core part of your job to report from the event so RELIABILITY AND FAMILIARITY are at the top of the list. It’s risky to introduce new items without having done a lot of testing and that’s why the Gigabyte Touchnote is my #1 laptop. Actually it’s a netbook but I’ve got and excellent 3G modem (retro-fitted by Mobilx.eu,) 64GB SSD (for speed and ruggedness,) touchscreen, Draft-N support, BT2.1 and an Expresscard slot which takes it way above the average netbook specifications. It’s been tested well and I recommend it. I usually partner it with the u2o power bank (tested here) which brings the total battery life up to around 5 hard-working hours. I do plan to pick up an extended battery for the Touchnote at some point though because I’d like to be at the 7-hours mark if possible. One huge advantage of the u2o power bank is that you can plug it inline with the Touchnote and both the power bank and Touchnote will charge overnight. No need to set a 3am wake-up call to swap out and charge a second battery!
I’ll also be taking the Viliv S5 with me. Actually, there’s a hidden agenda with this one. Viliv have offered to swap out my S5 (which is actually a loaner) for the new 3G SSD version which I’m going to do long-term testing on. I’ll only have one 3G SIM card though so that will stay in the Touchnote. It’s at times like this you really need a Mifi 3G Wifi router!
I’ll be using my trusty Canon S2 IS for photography and filming. It’s over three years old but it still taking good pics and videos. I know my way around the device well now so I’m really reluctant to upgrade despite the lack of external mic input, M-JPEG recording format and slow flash warm-up time. I’m also using the N82 for snapshot photography. It’s quick, has the xenon flash (great for catching incriminating evidence at parties!) and has a built-in ‘post to flickr’ feature. The quality is more than good enough for the web.
I’ll have my Samson USB mic for podcasts which gives great quality in noisy environments. Audacity is the software I use for recording. The Sennheiser headset goes too.
The blue box of tricks has spare batteries, connectors, SD cards, screwdriver set, tape and other bits and pieces in it. It usually stays in the hotel.
So is there anything missing? Yes. I’d like to have a slider-style all-day battery life, all-day on, 3G-connected MID in my pocket. Microblogging is important to me and so is staying updates over twitter, rss feeds and web page updates. The S5 does a great job with web consumption but I want a real keyboard for the back-channel. A UMID Mbook M1 with 3G and two batteries would suit me fine but let us hope that we’ll see one or two more options rising to the surface at Computex this week.
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