GearWERKZ TechBlog

I spent most of the week on travel, and being reminded of how much I do not like being forced to spend time with people that I would just as soon prefer to have nothing to do with. One of the unfortunate byproducts of being in a high-travel job. If only you could pick your co-workers like you could your friends. Anyway, I took a bunch of gear, and wound up getting very little time to use it. As a result, this particular installment of the post-trip gear report will be a little brief, but here goes.

Follow up:

Gear that went on this trip included the following:

Laptop: Dell XPS M1330
Game System: Sony Playstation Portable
Thumb Drives: Lexar 128MB
Lexar (Work) 1GB
SanDisk CRUZDrive 2GB (website)
Headphones: Sony MDR-V700s
Video: Encoded DVD Archive (Formula One Races and The 3 Stooges)
Digital Camera: Sony Alpha a350 dSLR
35-105mm Macro Zoom Lens
100-200mm Macro Zoom Lens
Sony DSC-S750 Compact Digital Camera
DAP: iPod Nano
Cell Phone: AT&T Tilt
Bag: LowePro CompuDayPack
Extras: CompactFlash Card Reader, SimpleTech 250GB Portable HD,
company Blackberry 8800, Sierra Wireless 875u Data Modem,
Plantronics Xplorer 340 Bluetooth Headset

I didn’t bother mentioning the UMDs shown in the pre-flight photo. Those were one of the sets of things I did not get any time to use. Despite all of the effort downloading items to my PS3 and setting up and validating my PS3-to-PSP RemotePlay connection, I got no time to actually avail myself of it.

It was the first time on travel with the Dell, and it performed a-ok. I used it to uplink on a bridge-wing and OWA into my work email account and send a few emails we needed to get out to have some data analyzed. I watched a few iTunes videos on the flights out and back (wrapping up season one of Roswell). I am giving some thought to not bothering to purchase the extended 9-cell battery. I used to practically not care about battery power, but I have noticed that over the last year, I have become a battery snob. In fact, in some purchases it has become a prime requirement in making my final selection on a particular device. But on this trip, I was getting just over 3 hours of battery power, and that was while viewing iTunes video. Do I really need much more than that? We’ll see. The $155 that Dell wants for an extended power battery is a little steep for a pack that may only buy me power that is in the margins of what is practical. I honestly do not think that I would use my laptop for more than 3 hours on an aircraft. The only benefit that I think I would gain is maybe not being so wrapped around the axle about finding a seat near an electrical outlet on layovers, which can sometimes be a pain.

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