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Road warrior tips.

Real road warriors will have already figured out what they need to survive. However, there are a lot of people who find themselves in the ‘have laptop, will travel’ mode for the first time

1. Power – Some hotels are short in the outlet department. If you can fit it in, take a decently sized extension cord, a compact surge suppressor and outlet strips.

2. Blank CDs. – Our laptop has a CD burner. We like to burn a CD with any data we created during the trip and carry that separately

3. Dial up access. Not every hotel will have high speed access. We use Access-4-free. Before we travel we download their local numbers for the areas where we will be travelling.

4. Wireless Card – We take a Wireless G. Card with us at all times. Some hotels have wifi access in the room. A wireless card will also help with wifi hotspots

5. A patch cable. Some hotels will provide a cable and others require you bring your own. You should also bring along a phone cable.

6. Check your hotels out beforehand. In many cases the staff at the front desk will be unfamiliar with the high speed access. In some cases we have found a toll free number on the network connection where you can get assistance.

7. Cost – The going rate seems to be about $10 per day. Some hotels such as the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood Florida include high speed access (and unlimited phone calling) as part of the resort fee.

8. Bring a list of cyber cafes. Many Starbucks, fuel stations and other locations offer wifi access. You might want to bring a list of wifi hotspots with you.

9. Consider bringing an aircard. An aircard will allow cellular like access. You can read our review of earthlink’s service for more information.

10. Printing. – If you are going to be gone for some time, you might want to consider your printing needs. If you want to spend about $250 you can buy a compact mobile printer. Of course it will add weight and bulk to your travel load. Make sure you bring a small supply of paper.

11. Security. Stay in reputable hotels for starters. The hotel at a Westin we recently visited had an in room safe that would easily hold a laptop. Otherwise you might want to look into one of the available laptop locking devices. The problem is that there aren’t a whole lot of good locations to lock your laptop. Consider that the laptop could be stolen at any time. Take an inventory before you leave of the data on the laptop. How much damage would you incur if that data were to fall into the wrong hands? Encryption programs will help

12. Firewalls. When you are at a wifi hotspot or anywhere else on the road, make sure you have an active firewall.

13. Access Codes. This is especially important if you don’t regularly use the laptop for your email. Configure your laptop before you leave so that you can access your email accounts.

15. Email – We usually set our email accounts to “Leave messages on server” and “delete messages when deleted from the deleted items folder”. That way, all of our important messages remain on our server in case we lose or damage the laptop. However, we can kill the spam on the server by deleting it from the deleted items folder.

Search suggestions. If you'd like more information, try some of the searches below. (Results will open in a new window. If you are using a pop up blocker, you might need to enable pop ups for this site. We do not serve pop up advertising but this will allow the search results to show up in a separate window) Cyber Cafes Hotspots - You can usually add the name of the location you will be visiting. i.e. hotspots atlantic city. hint - you can copy and past the search terms to get you started.

Last modified:  11/10/06