Road Warriors - recommended travel equipment from Palm Inc., Nextel Communications, etc - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Feb, 2001 by Michael J. Martinez

TECHNOLOGY | The right gear for BUSINESS TRAVEL isn't always the lightest and most powerful.

THE HULKING NYLON computer cases hanging from slumping shoulders at airports worldwide stand in mute testimony that when it comes to technology, people are still hauling around today's equivalent of a 19th-century steamer trunk, full of unnecessary gear they can't bring themselves to leave behind.

The easiest solution would be to go for the lightest tools available. But there's more to it than that. What, for example, about energy use? Thin laptops need to be recharged constantly. What about processing power? PowerPoint presentations are one thing, but hard-core mathematical computations require something beefier. Then there's your cell phone. Will you have service? What about roaming charges? Can you take a Boston phone to Miami? To London? To Beijing? Does size matter? What about Internet service?

Preparing for a business trip requires you to know what type of road warrior you are and to arm yourself accordingly. Consider the following categories and components before girding yourself for your next foray.

The scout

IF YOU'RE on the go without a home base and need to be in constant contact with the office, you're a scout. Insurance adjusters, sales and marketing gurus, journalists and the like tend to fall into this category --and if you simply like a minimal amount of clutter with a maximum amount of firepower, consider yourself to be in this category as well. The key here is communication. Depending on the amount of time you're away from the office, you might not even need a laptop, heretical as that sounds.

Palm Inc. recently improved its $449 wireless Palm VII organizer so that it can log in to corporate and Web-based e-mail accounts. Palm also stopped charging by the byte and switched to a flat monthly rate of $45. The Palm VIIx is just as reliable as a laptop fi)r keeping your data safe (in other words, don't lose it), and it weighs only about seven ounces.

Of course, writing down anything more than an appointment using the Palm's stylus is extremely tedious. So for $99, pick up a collapsible keyboard for the Palm VIIx, available on Palm's Web site or at Palm dealers. The nearly full-size keyboard folds up into a case just slightly larger than the Palm itself. It syncs with the Palm at the touch of a button and will recognize anything you type in any program you're using. The eight-ounce keyboard will take a little getting used to--and forget about using it in your lap. But if you can deal with that, you'll get a very serviceable e-mail and Web-surfing device for less than $550 that weighs less than a pound. The Palm VIIx's keyboard also works with any Palm III device.

Still, the Palm-keyboard solution is probably good for only a day or two on the road. Any longer than that and the boss may require real work--which means a laptop. Many scouts will be lured by the ultrathin Sony VAIO, but it has a very limited battery life: Some models last barely 90 minutes. Instead, check out the Toshiba Portege 3480CT. For $2,299, about $500 less than the VAIO, you get a magnificent laptop that's just 3.4 pounds. It comes standard with a Pentium III 600megahertz processor with the new SpeedStep technology. That drops processor performance down a notch (usually to 500MHz) to save on power. The standard battery has two and a half hours of battery life, which is great for such a thin machine.

The rest is pretty standard: 64 megabytes of memory, a roomy 12gigabyte hard drive and a modem. The screen is 11.3 inches, which may seem a little small but isn't bad. The big drawback here is that it doesn't have a CD-ROM or DVD drive, which are $179 and $379, respectively. Plus, you have to use another piece of hardware, the port replicator that comes with the computer, to attach a CD or DVD drive to the Portege. Still, a scout doesn't usually have time for CDs or movies anyway, and the drives can be squirreled away in another piece of luggage if need be.

A scout needs two things in a mobile phone: battery power and compatibility. Someone who is constantly on the move can't be worrying about how much talk time is in his or her phone's battery. And if you're headed overseas, a phone that can handle various wireless infrastructures is critical. Otherwise, you might as well get a pair of tin cans and a really long string.

Nextel Communications' i2000 is one of the few phones available in the U.S. that uses GSM, Europe's main wireless system. The six-ounce phone boasts a respectable 240 minutes of talk time, voice mail and paging. Plus, no matter where you are in one of the 65 countries Nextel serves, you need only one phone number.

But such advantages will cost you worldwide. Foreign calls can range from 99 cents per minute in the United Kingdom to $2.99 per minute in the Ivory Coast. Even in the U.S., Nextel's basic service plan costs $59.95 per month, although that includes free long distance and no roaming charges. The phone, by the way, was recently on sale for $99.