Left to my own devices

My job requires me to travel a fair bit and in recent weeks I’ve spent as much time abroad as in the UK.

The good news is that every time I fly I get slightly better at packing. Fewer, lighter items, just enough clothing and fewer documents all mean that most trips now involve only hand luggage.

Believe me, you don’t want to be hanging round the baggage carousel in Lagos, Nigeria if you can possibly avoid it. Wait times there can be anything up to four hours.

It also means I’d know how to avoid RyanAir’s baggage fee if I hadn’t found a secret way to do that already. Here’s a clue: use another airline.

So clothes are licked but I’d welcome your ideas for a similarly reductive approach to packing electronic devices.

Gadget inspector

Let’s take a look at what devices and accessories I’ve been lugging around recently.

1. Roland Edirol
Portable audio recorder. Most of the Earshot Creative Reviews are recorded on this. Adjustable audio input controls, optional AGC/limiter and LF cut. I greatly prefer its crisp bright sound quality to that from a Zoom H4 (and it’s smaller). Radio’s Jonathan Marks tells me the Sony is better still though.

2. Nokia N95
The off-duty phone. To avoid the distraction of business emails I’ll drop the SIM from the Blackberry into this elderly N95 8GB after work. It boasts a halfway-decent camera, runs Google Latitude and the telephone audio quality is super. An old friend.

3. Sony mp3 player
Given to judges of the Sony Radio Academy Awards, it’s a FM radio that plays mp3s and records direct from the radio. This is immensely useful for my work. Being Sony, it uses a proprietary connector and lead, 8.

4. iPod Touch
First edition device full of music and podcasts. Great for reading feeds, checking websites and updating this blog (cough). However, it’s sometimes a hassle getting logged into hotel wifi and its battery life is becoming poor.

5. Blackberry
The on-duty phone. Standard corporate issue. More locked down than Belmarsh. No apps, dreadful camera, tinny, scratchy-sounding phone but the best/only way to send and receive corporate email on the road and the battery lasts all day.

6. Earphones
Sennheiser in-ear type. Good noise exclusion so you can run them quietly and they’re rather comfy too.

7. Nokia charger
This is the smallest Nokia charger with the thinnest cable I could find.

9. iPod charger
Better than a USB lead because I will never want to sync to the corporate laptop.

10. World’s Shortest USB Lead™
Just enough. Never gets tangled.

11. Laptop
The smallest laptop my employer issues. It’s old and slow and runs a hobbled corporate version of Windows XP but is still my preferred device for writing. Inside is “all my work stuff”, sync’d off the servers so long days travelling can be opportunities to work on documents and generally sort things out. Its 7 hour battery life survives a flight to sub-Saharan Africa.

12. Laptop powerpack
Rather bulky really with a ridiculously chunky cable for the couple of Amps this draws.

All in all, it’s a bit much isn’t it. Everything gets used but I’d like to carry less. So, come on technology fans, what should I do?

Photo: Heading Home with the Suitcase by Dr John2005 on Flickr. Used under licence.