As you would easily guess, when traveling all aroud the world but mainly in Europe, it is extremely important that we always carry the best gadgets and techies with us so that we can keep in touch with our families and also our own businesses... In fact, the msnbc.com article just below will show you how incredibly important these technological gadgets may be:
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With my mantra being "pack light," I used to be against packing electronics of any kind. But now, I bring my laptop, iPod, digital camera, and mobile phone to Europe. With hotels retiring their fax machines in favor of email, mobile phones getting cheaper and easier to buy, and Wi-Fi hotspots popping up everywhere, it's never been simpler to get connected.
There are plenty of Internet cafes in Europe. Large European chains such as easyInternetcafe.com offer inexpensive access in big cities. Even small towns have some way to get online — at hostels, hotels, libraries, bookstores, post offices, and so on. If you plan to check your email using a public machine, make sure you sign up for a Web-based account, such as Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, or Gmail.com.
If you tote your own laptop, you'll find that many hotels and cafes offer wireless access — sometimes it's free, other times, you'll have to buy a drink or pay a fee — while some towns have Wi-Fi hotspots scattered around highly trafficked areas. Just pay for a password, park yourself on a bench in your favorite idyllic spot — overlooking a sandy beach, on a floodlit piazza, or along a bustling people-watching boulevard — then log on and surf away.
I like to bring an iPod to listen to my favorite music and shows that I've downloaded at home. My Website, ricksteves.com, offers free audio tours of Europe's major sights plus hundreds of hours of my public-radio shows on travel.If you're packing a digital camera, your biggest challenge will be storing photos. Buy the biggest memory card you can afford (or get two). Memory cards are available in Europe, but they're more expensive. I travel with a six-megapixel camera and a two-gigabyte memory card. Taking photos at high resolution, I can fit about 500 photos onto my memory card. Since I usually travel with a laptop, I upload my photos to my computer. Without a laptop, you could empty — or copy — your memory card as you go, by getting your images burned to a CD (European photo stores and Internet cafes charge $7 to $10 for this service).
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