Planning for the Geek

All of this planning, in terms of itineraries, visas, and vaccines, is fun to a point. However, what really matters is can we communicate and capture memories on the road. Much of our early technology plan centered around whether we were going to take a worldwide smart phone (like a Treo) or a laptop.

A Treo-like device would be perfect because it's small and exceptionally lightweight. We could also make regular voice calls, which could be a nice lifeline to have. On the downside, service may not be universal, and the fees could easily blow away our budget, particularly fees to upload many megabytes of photos to Flickr. Plus, there's no room on the handheld to store photos.

On the other hand, a laptop offers quite a bit of flexibility, although it will be quite a bit heavier. We can watch DVDs when we want to spend a night in. Storing photos is no longer a problem. We can also burn CDs of pics as we go, so if we lose the computer or the camera, we're not completely out of luck. Plus, connectivity through wired or wireless connections may be easier than trying to connect to