As technology enabled nomads (thus ‘Technomad’), our mobile technology arsenal plays a critical role in our chosen lifestyle.
We’re both pretty high tech folks (and geeky gadget nerds), and we work in the technology industry. We also both need to stay connected to family, friends and clients via various mobile devices—as well as uploading our adventure notes and photos. As we like to keep mobile and never know if we’ll be traveling via bus, train, plane, boat or backpack – we like to keep things as flexible and streamlined as possible. We put a lot of thought into our technology arsenal, and are always changing things up.
We’re constantly updating and evolving our technology, however here is what is in our current (updated June 2011) arsenal:
Computers
| We now both have Apple MacBook Pros, and we love them. Chris has a 15″ MacBook Pro offers a great balance of power and portability, and it is probably the best balanced all-around laptop ever made. Cherie has a 17″, which gives her more screen real estate for her multiple projects. The newest models have an integrated battery that can get up to 9 hrs of real battery life – wonderful for us often disconnected nomads. | |
| We have two iPad 2s, both 32GB. One of them is a 3G model on AT&T, and the other wifi only.
We use these all the time and now consider them essential technology in our arsenal, as they make for a perfect in vehicle device for navigating, keeping up with e-mail, blog comments, checking stocks, Twitter correspondence, finding campgrounds, reading the news, playing music & podcasts, streaming entertainment, creating documents and so much more. They’ve also become the device we most often reach for in the morning to check in on the world, ending the evening by reading an eBook and the device we take with us into meetings – both business and personal. The iPad has successfully founds it’s place as the perfect device inbetween our laptops and iPhones. |
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Cherie uses a Wacom Intuos4 Small Pen Tablet as an interface to her MacBook Pro, primarily for hand creating the maps for our popular traveler’s iPhone app, Coverage?. |
Cellular Services & Internet Connectivity
Read our article on our full wrap up of mobile internet options.
| <We have both been smartphone users as long as the term “smartphone” has been around. Chris even used be the ‘chief spy’ for Palm/Palm Source and traveled the world keeping up on smart phone and handheld devices. And at the moment, our phone of choice is the iPhone 4.
We have had all versions of the iPhone released so far, and currently both sporting the 32 GB iPhone 4 on AT&T. We’ve even started developing our own line of iPhone travel apps. We do use tethering on one of the iPhones for getting laptops and iPads online when our Verizon aircard is unavailable. |
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| Both of our laptops, our iPhones, and the iPad all have WiFi built in, and we try take advantage of WiFi connections whenever we can find them. A surprising number of campgrounds actually offer WiFi now, and even some cities have been blanketed with free city-wide coverage.
But when away from the joys of WiFi, our primary access to the Internet on our laptops & iPads is via an Advanced 3G Plan (which is Verizon) from Millenicom with 20GB a month of data. |
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| Our Cradlepoint CTR-350 Router that works with our Millenicom/Verizon USB Air card, creating a WiFi hotspot wherever we go. This allows us to both utilize a single cellular internet connection at the same time. (There is a newer model out: CTR-500)
The CTR-350 is ultra small, portable and can be setup anywhere to be our WiFi hotspot. Often when visiting friends it is easier for us to set up the CTR-350 than it is for them to remember the password to their own WiFi network! CradlePoint also offers a battery powered version for even more portability – the PHS-300 |
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| Satellite ! | To have connectivity while being even more remote, we now carry a Hughes Satellite tripod dish system with a HN7000S modem. We bought the system used, so we have no contract and can suspect the service when we’re not using it. |
Entertainment Systems
We love our Altec Lansing iMT620 inMotion Classic Portable iPod Dock with Rechargeable Battery and FM Tuner for plugging into our iPhones to become our home audio system. It’s portable with a battery, or can run off of A/C power. The sound is quite reasonable, and the size compact. |
Though we hardly ever watch television, we like having the option – in particular just in case of a weather emergency or crisis where tuning in to local news may be critical. We have an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid connected to our Mac Mini that we use for tuning HD TV and FM radio. This not only allows us to have access to local TV without needing to lug around a satellite dish or pay subscription fees, it also enables TiVo-style DVR recording.
Though the EyeTV can work with the cable TV that some RV parks offer, we usually use the RCA 1550 Amplified HDTV Antenna to capture signals to watch. This small flat antenna is easy to hide deep inside the inner wall of our Oliver, and it offered the best reception of the several other antennas we compared it against. |
Navigation & Safety
We’re currently using a Garmin nÁ¼vi 855 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Speech Recognition that we bought used.. It’s nice to have maps always up with your current location to get a general idea. But generally we use our iPhones & iPads for navigation. We also tend to re-route and change plans on the fly, and we’ve found that most GPS software just isn’t adaptable to nomadic whims. |
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We use a Ryobi ZRIR001 Non-Contact Infrared Thermometer to monitor the temperatures of our tires, hubs and other moving parts on our bus when making safety stops. |
Cameras & Printers
| Our Canon PIXMA iP100 Mobile Photo Printer is an ideal portable color ink jet printer. It’s portable, compact and gets the job done when we need to print something out (which we try to avoid whenever possible). It even does a reasonable job printing photos – even borderless 8×10’s! | |
Cherie’s camera of choice is the Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full 1080p HD Video (Black) – it’s ultra compact, fits in her waist pouch and takes awesome 12 megapixel photos and HD video. The majority of our video work is done with this awesome little camera. |
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| Chris’ camera of choice is the micro Four Thirds format digital SRL Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 12.1MP Digital SLR Camera. It’s a great combination of size, quality and features. |
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