Industry events and meetings with international clients and investors often mean business travel for entrepreneurs. With the right preparation for these trips, you can go a long way toward making them more enjoyable, fun, and successful. While so many travel gadgets from days of yore have been replaced by apps, there is still a lot to be said for handy gadgets and software innovations that you can take with you on your next trip.
If you are a certified travel warrior, you probably know about using slip-on shoes and consolidating attire into a carry-on to avoid the long check-in lines. There are still more ways to streamline your business travel preparations. Here are the top tech must haves to reduce your gadget load without compromising work.
Bring a thin laptop.
Laptops are indispensable in the business world. Bring an extra thin laptop with you, if possible. One of the best suggestions for modern business trips is to skip on the thick, heavy notebook that you traditionally use in the office. But this depends on the type of job you have and the presentation you make in your business trips. Try to bring a light, high performance laptop with you. These light notebooks also have longer-lasting and bigger internal batteries with them.
Pack a back-up charger.
Efficient back-up chargers are life savers for a frequent business traveler. The device charges for a few hours. When you run out of power on your tablet, laptop, or smartphone, you can conveniently connect on the back-up charger for extended use.
Invest in a good smartphone.
Almost one third of the American adult population has smartphones, and 87 percent of this number uses their smartphones for internet access everyday—this is according to a survey done by the Pew Research Center. If you are a frequent business traveler, a smartphone is essential in checking emails, calling clients, and stay connected on the go. You may also carry an extra smartphone with you in the absence of back-up battery chargers. It would be wise to bring along a smartphone with wireless tethering feature (mobile hot spot). This feature lets your phone function as a wireless modem for your laptop, eliminating the need for a USB dongle or perhaps an external wireless device like the MiFi.
Take advantage of the cloud.
Take advantage of the industry’s newest technologies like the cloud. If your company still heavily relies on the traditional desktop applications, consider moving it to the cloud. A perfect example of an efficient cloud computing app is the Dropbox, which allows you to store documents, photos, videos, and multimedia online and lets you access these files on any device. Google Docs is also an efficient cloud computing tool used by companies these days. Its sleek interface features paragraph formatting, spell-check, and many more.
Streamline your gadgets with virtualization.
At times, a frequent business traveler tends to use a smartphone or iPad instead a laptop, especially to quickly access an email or project file. In the coming months this should get a whole lot easier as virtualization software is beginning to be used by smartphone companies. This would allow multiple operating systems to be run simultaneously on one device. Personal and professional files, texts, and emails would be both secure and easily accessible. Keep a look out for this new development and prepare for a more streamlined and secure travel experience.
A final tip that may appear simple but should not be overlooked—make sure you bring extra cables. You might think that you can easily get away with one micro USB cable. But it would be wise to carry a standard cable, a cable to connect if there is no Wi-Fi, a laptop charger, all your gadget chargers, and a good HDMI cable which connects your computer to an HDTV. You will never know if the business trip gets extended or finishes on time and you would want power cables that connect your mobile phone to your laptop.
I think the most important thing is investing to smartphone and good connection. Thanks for the good tips provided here!