As I prepared for this trip, I seriously considered carrying a laptop for the purpose of blogging. However, since my IBM ThinkPad is heavy and most countries have entered the 21st century technology wise, I thought I would see how I managed without a laptop. Well, I soon discovered that, if you are going to blog or require regular internet access while on the road, traveling without a laptop or other internet technology can be more than challenging. Some of the obstacles I encountered include, but were not limited to the following:
- while many hotels provide a computer for their guests to use, you have to share it with other guests, so time is limited and/or the cost is high (i.e. 3 to 5 euro or $4.50 to 7.50 USD per hour)
- hotel computers may not work well or not at all
- on most computers, while internet pages may display in English, the menus and tool bars for FireFox, Internet Explorer and other programs are in Greek or Turkish
- Turkish computers have odd keyboards so you have to use a different key for the letter “i” and for the “@” sign, making it very awkward to type
- while internet cafes are sometimes more economical than hotel computers, they are not always convenient or available, or their hours may not suit your needs
- much of my spare time on this trip was spent looking for my next work project and resolving travel issues (see the pick pocket posts)
- the two week tour of Turkey kept me very busy, leaving little time to blog
- way too much time was spent dumping and clearing photos from my too few camera memory cards to a thumb drive or on-line
The results of this experiment? In the future, I will definitely travel with a netbook. There were numerous opportunities to blog, journal and/or do work in my room at night, and on the many trains, buses and ferries. With a note or netbook, this blog would have been kept up to date. But I took notes and will catch up soon.
Any netbook recommendations?
I will also bring more and larger capacity memory cards for my two cameras. ~