Agincourt Technologies Ltd

Traveling with Technology

While this may be slightly late in the year, we thought it would be useful to provide some advice on using ICT while abroad on holiday or business trips.

Hardware

For starters you are going to need a laptop, relying upon Internet Cafes isn't an ideal solution. Now you probably don't want to be lugging around a heavy 15" laptop, so something like a 7" Asus Eee PC would be ideal, and they are really affordable (from around £150). If the Eee PC isn't for you then anything upto 13" or a slim 15" (e.g MacBook Pro) would also be excellent.

To make things even more mobile you can usually purchase additional batteries for your laptop, which is a good idea if you are unsure about how often you will have access to a power socket. Also on a side note, remember to take some adapters, you can usually buy them in the airport for less than £10 if you forget to pack some, but finding them abroad is usually much more difficult.

If you need internet access whilst abroad we have found 3G dongles are really useful and most phone networks can supply them, however they are very expensive, even with the prices dropping all the time it is going to be a few years before it's affordable for consumers to use freely abroad. The current price is around £3-£6 per MB, so bear in mind that only a few small email attachments or webpages will amount to 1MB, it's easy to hit 50+ MB over a week if you are not monitoring your usage.

Phone-wise prices in the EU are becoming increasingly affordable due to new legislation, you can expect to see them dropping incrementally over the next few years, and the prices this year may even be a surprise to you. Blackberry users can rest assured the Blackberry internet service is international by standard so using the messenger and email is totally free, and if you are looking for new Blackberries, do give us a call for more information.

Preparation

If you've had a laptop for a while it's battery probably isn't in a great state, you should cycle your battery at least once a month, and that means, draining it down to nothing and only shutting down after it has gone into emergency sleep mode (make sure all your documents are saved before you do this), then recharging it to full capacity while it is powered off, if you do this for a few months before your holiday, and once directly before you go then your battery should be pretty healthy, alternatively you can buy a new battery.

If you have purchased any new or additional batteries, make sure you charge them before you go, because it may be a while before you can get it charged again.

If you have any concerns or queries about what you will be charged for on holiday it is best to call your mobile phone network, especially as sometimes it works out in your favor to prepay for international usage.