After years of work travel covering numerous countries, my laptop and me have become integral. A much revered travel companion through thick and thin.
Partly due to work needs and partly to keep in touch with family and home matters on a more timely manner.
I should mention that my current laptop is a MacBook Pro. And I have gone thru other laptops before this. I guess one has to keep up with technology. Laptops can easily last 5 years or more but new features can be enticing. I tend to keep mine on average for 5 years.
Phone vs the laptop
My iPhone on other hand has played a quieter and an increasingly sedate role on the road. It has become a WhatsApp and now a Signal messaging appliance and a camera. I have gone weeks without making or receiving a single conventional phone call. How things have evolved, the phone function is now incidental.
I did notice the shift from phone to the laptop becoming more pronounced in the last 6 to 8 years.
The phone occasionally does come out when I need to Uber around or order food. You also need it for getting authentication codes to access bank accounts or log into the work laptop.
With free broadband readily available at public places around the World, a local sim card is not necessary at foreign destinations. It was not the case in the past. The laptop has ascended in rank as a result.
FaceTime, Zoom. MS Teams and a host of other applications are also better on a bigger screen. In addition VOIP auditory quality has improved and exceeds a regular phone call. Anyway the vast majority of contacts and communications are now done thru messaging apps which are available on the smartphone and the laptop.
One laptop for work and home
I used to carry both the work and personal laptops on work travel but with advent of technology the personal laptop is only needed. It allows you to access your work desktop remotely and securely. You literally see your work desktop as you last left it in the office.
The days of carrying two laptops are now gone. I do remember the hassle of lugging 2 laptops on work travel and pulling both out for Immigration each and everytime. What a relief!
The Repository of all things
The single biggest thing about a personal laptop is that it has become a convenient repository for all things. Personal, confidential, important and the mundane. Not just documents. Photos and videos are all part of the deal.
It holds scanned colour copies of identity and travel documents, testimonials and other credentials for the family. Really handy when you are asked to apply for visas or renew existing arrangements. When a family member asks for a document, you can forward it in a minute even if you are in another country.
iCloud Back-up
Every time I do anything on my laptop it is linked to my cloud account. It covers documents, photos, videos, email messages, contacts, notes and my password keychain. There is no need for a separate or distinct action. It just requires one-time activation. The iCloud is free for most purposes unless you load a lot of photos and require additional space.
Lose the laptop and you are still in good hands. Just get another and all your stuff from the cloud are in your new laptop as soon as you sign in. With various form of authentication protocols such as fingerprint, facial recognition and 2 factor in place, security is there.
A Staging platform
Now a break from travel and little on the home front.
In recent years, the laptop has become a staging area of sorts for personal matters when I am not travelling, and need to get out of the house for some time to chill. Early mornings on weekends when everyone are still in bed seems ideal.
A short ride by car or bike or even a walk to the cafe of choice, I order a flat white and out comes the laptop. With so many Bohemian like cafes and coffee all over Adelaide city and the surrounds it not hard to find a quite table, a nice Barista and great coffee.
The usual routine is to cover the online news. Then comes replies to emails and touching base with friends near and far. More recreational matters such as going thru my Strava log It helps me plan my next ride up the Hills and the fork to take as I clear Norton Summit.
If the day is long, and a second dig of coffee is needed I turn on the Kindle app on my laptop. I proceed to read the next chapter of Douglas Murray’s book “The Maddness of Crowds”. By the way this book is informative for all us who have to meander thru trip wires and minefields of Political Correctness. Right or wrong, you become aware of issues resolved and unresolved at a time when identity means many things to many people.
Visual cues
Back on the road and on lengthly travels, visual cues are important to hold on to sanity. I go thru family photos, watch movies or make movies. Making movies in this case is pulling all the disjointed video clips on events, piecing them together and editing it in iMovies. Its tedious and consumes hours but I do it when I have nothing much to do. Waiting between flights or in a hotel room with hours to kill come to mind. .
With retina display on the laptop, it’s a delightful experience now to go thru photos, videos and watch movies. All a blessing on long flights which are never a pleasure.
What next?
I always wondered what comes after the smartphone and the laptop. Do you? Or will it be just another reshuffle with the smartphone coming back to rank 1.
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