Tech confessions of a junket whore

My reputation as an excessively well-travelled journalist/junket whore (delete as you see fit) continues to flourish. In a recent posting on his blog, Dan Warne (news and features editor at APC and one of the people who keeps me in gainful freelance employment) opens a discussion of how he’s been making use of the latest technology (on-plane Internet, GRPS access to email while roaming through France) on his travels with the words: “Angus Kidman would be proud.”

This is flattering, but kind of inaccurate. Although I don’t travel anywhere without a notebook, as often as not I make use of old-fashioned dial-up access if the hotel in question doesn’t have in-room broadband. My machine doesn’t have built-in wireless and at the moment the PC card slots aren’t working — an annoying saga of multiple repairs which means I won’t be buying a Toshiba next time around — so I’m not using wireless on planes, in cafes or even in conferences. And my phone is an ageing Nokia model which certainly isn’t up to handling email. Indeed, the other day when I used it at a conference, gadget queen Roulla Yiacoumi couldn’t help exclaiming: “My god, I can’t believe your phone has a mono screen!”

All this might change in the next few months when I can financially justify replacing the notebook and my equally clunky PDA with something a tad newer. But I don’t think I’m ever likely to be as ambitious as Dan in the communicating-on-the-road stakes. Nor, for that matter, am I ever likely to use a Mac, but that’s another story.