Re-evaluating my travel gadgetry

I enjoy my gadgets. I enjoy them a lot. I take them everywhere I go. I’m not obsessed with them, but I find that they help me pass the time when I’m by myself or during quite periods when my crew is still sleeping.

Everyone in my family has an “electronics bag” that they carry their stuff in when we travel. During our summer vacation this year I got tickled watching everyone pack their gadget bags. I had everyone lay their stuff out on our coffee table and I snapped a quick photo. The image is below. As you can see it’s quite a bit of stuff.

I change up my travel gear all the time. I have both a work laptop and a tablet PC. I used to travel with both machines, but it became cumbersome, especially with all the security at airports. So now I only take one machine depending on what I’m doing, i.e. when I travel for work I take my work machine and when I travel for fun I take my tablet PC.

My other options when I travel include:

I’ve been trying to pare it down a bit as my bag is getting heavy. I’m considering going in two completely different directions.

Option 1: Get a Lenovo X1 Carbon to replace both my work laptop and my tablet PC, and add a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 to replace my need for note taking on a tablet.

Option 2: Get a new Windows 8 hybrid tablet like the Samsung ATIV Smart PC to replace my work machine and take the place of my aging Lenovo t201x tablet PC. With this scenario I’d continue to carry my Samsung Tab 7.0 Plus.

Option 2 is much cheaper, but Option 1 has a pretty solid coolness factor associated with it. I’ll mull this over for a while, at least until the new Windows 8 machines appear on the scene.

Comments

3 responses to “Re-evaluating my travel gadgetry”

  1. Greg

    How about Asus 810 Win8 laptop/tablet with Wacom pen support (http://www.asuseeepad.net/blog/2012/06/asus-tablet-810-details-price-release-date-buy/) to replace work PC, tablet, and specialized note taking product? Still has coolness factor, not sure the price on it, but if it is similar to a Transformer, it is a great buy.

    I still give the Samsung Note 10.1 a thumbs down and would recommend against it. I told you I returned mine – very cheap build, not enough pen support (for example, transferring notes from S-Note to Evernote embedded notes as images in Evernote)

  2. Jerry Fahrni

    Thanks for the info on the Asus. It would fit the bill. I’m looking at all the Win 8 machines right now. It’s a good time to be a consumer. Another machine that I really like is the Fujitsu Stylistic Q702. It’s using the new N-trig digitizer.

    I’m really bummed about the Samsung Note 10.1. Samsung had an opportunity to hit one out of the park. Thanks for saving me the trouble of buying one and taking it back. Maybe the Note 10.1 v2 will be better. Wait and see.

  3. Tom Hsiung

    Professional equipments for GI.

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