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Tools for the Independent Road Warrior: Part 2 |
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Written by Tamara Mazzei
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Monday, 21 July 2008 |
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I have been traveling in the UK for the past two weeks, and as I indicated in my last post, I had every intention of posting an update from the road. However, I ran into an unforeseen problem that prevented me from doing so.
Before going into details about my reason for not posting, I'd like to comment on the ASUS EeePC 4G sub-notebook computer that I took with me. It turns that it's a great little machine, lightweight and small enough to carry in my handbag. Although I would have liked for the battery to have lasted longer – it maxed out at about three hours – I ended up with only one serious beef with the EeePC: the keys, particularly the space bar, stick unmercifully. In fact, the sticking was so bad that at several points, I resorted to bashing on them quite hard to get things done. Even so, I frequently found myself with typographical errors, mainly missing spaces, because pressing the space bar didn't produce a space. Beyond the problem with the sticky keys, any other issues with the machine were trivial.
Surprisingly, my inability to post, had nothing to do with the EeePC or with a lack of available WiFi – two things I had been concerned about prior to my trip. I wasn't able to post because my hotel's firewall was set to block logging in to ANYTHING. This meant that while I was able to surf anonymously to any page I liked, I wasn't able to view pages that required a log-in. I could not, for example, sign into Indie Market Place, nor could I access my email. It was incredibly infuriating and I was not able to resolve it with the hotel in spite of several attempts to do so.
I did manage to check my email once at an Internet café, although I was forced to pay an extra fee to use my own computer instead of theirs, which I also found annoying. And once I was outside of London and in the countryside, Internet cafés were few and far between, so I was forced to give up my plan for frequent email checks and additional updates on Indie Market Place.
Advice to travelers: If you really need to stay in email contact while you're on the road, make sure that the "free wireless" touted by your hotel includes the ability to sign on to your email, and as a back-up plan, take a list of Internet cafés!
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Last Updated ( Monday, 21 July 2008 )
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