What's in Your Gadget Bag, Cory?

Cory Doctorow has taken a two-second break from his road warrior ways to pen this description of the crud he lugs around. Read it and weep, wanna-bes.

Comments

CmdrTaco

[prostoalex]

They also asked CmdrTaco the same question recently.

Re:CmdrTaco

[waynelorentz]

This Cory guy is supposed to be some kind of Uber geek? Sorry to say it amongst the /. crowd, but my WIFE has him beat. She works in the fasion industry and travels for work a lot, so her stuff has to be small, reliable, and cool-looking.

>His Phone: He bought a LOCKED phone? Twice? do any geeks do that anymore? My wife has an unlocked SonyEricsson Z600 -- virtually impossible to find in the states. Bluetooth, WAP, and a big color screen that all fold down into a dainty clamshell. She gets her e-mail through its GPRS connection as a last resort when she's not near her other devices. It's worked from Houston to London to Paris to BiH, to the wilds of the Czech Republic with no problems.

>His Computer: She's got him beat again. She has the 17" AlBook. Bigger, faster, better.

>His PDA: She's got him beat with her Sony UX50. 480x320 screen. I rip her DVDs iinto 128meg memory sticks so she can watch while traveling. It has Bluetooth for syncing to her AlBook and phone, or using the phone's GPRS connection to get and send e-mails. It also has built-in WiFi, so she can surf at hotspots on her PDA, and get her e-mail faster.

>His iPod: Tie. She has the same one.

>His Bag: I like it a lot, and I'm going to get one for my PowerBook. But hers was designed by Gwen Steffani and is beautiful inside and out.

>His Watch: Please. Hers tells the time in changing Chinese LCDs. It's fascinatng to watch this watch.

>His Camera: Can't say because I don't know it, but she carries around a 2MP Canon Elph. Good resolution. Excellent color. Tiny and chic.

>Retractable Ethernet Cable? Is he serious? She doesn't stay in places that don't offer high-speed internet. And if it's wired, they supply the cable. Please. We're not in college anymore. We don't have to live like savages.

Newton revisited

[BWJones]

It seems to me that a number of these functions could be easily combined into one useful "sub-tablet" much like the Newton used to be. For instance:

1) I could not make phone calls on the Newton, but it seems to me that combining a WAP with code like iChat could easily be patched into a cellular network via a server which negotiates the call at perhaps a reduced price. VOIP, right? This way you don't have to worry about "locked" phones when you travel from one country to another or good around with those SIM cards. (where did I put that SIM card anyway? *as he digs furiously through his travel bag*)

2) I am not sure why folks like using their phones as cameras, but Sony has been integrating cameras into their Clie's for some time now and could easily be done. Although, again.....I am not sure why people want this. The CCDs would have to get LOTS better and you still have to deal with tiny lenses with lots of aberration in them. I much prefer my Canon Elph.

3) iPod. Well, yeah....music and why not movies too? This functionality could easily be emulated on any OS and as I recall, there are many folks that even play .mp3's off their old Newtons.

4) Well, the Newton was not a replacement for a full featured laptop, so if you want to do Photoshoppin or something like that, a sub-notebook will not cut it for screen real estate alone.

5) Cables? What cables? Use 802.11x and Bluetooth. Done.

6) Time? Apple for some time has had servers that are linked to atomic clocks so that you can set the time on your computer to an absolute time.

7) PDA? This would be an uber PDA. We don't need no stinkin Palm.

Shoot, there were people that were even using their Newtons as wireless web servers, so the functionality was there.

So, there. Seven devices that folks are totin around that could be all one device. I hate to say it but why does not Apple get back into this market? They could do it right.

Re:Newton revisited

[The Bungi]

I for one wish they'd bring back the HPC format (NEC Mobilon/HP Jornada 6/700 series). They stopped making them in 2000. With today's tech you could have:

• 640x320 65K color screen
• An iPod-style Toshiba microdrive. 4GB oughta do it.
• 256MB RAM plus whatever ROM you need for the OS and apps. MAKE IT FLASHABLE LIKE THE iPAQ FOR GOD'S SAKE
• 75% size laptop-like keyboard with tactile feedback. Really, without a goddamn keyboard PDAs are just expensive toys. I chuckle whenever I see some dude trying to take notes in one of those during a meeting.
• Built-in wireless. The higher end HP iPAQs already have this.
• Sync to PC/Linux/OS X. I mean, c'mon. It's not rocket science.
• Mofo battery life (8 hours or so assuming the HDD doesn't spin that much and the screen backlight is used carefully).
• Handwriting recognition would be nice regardless of the keyboard - the HWR of the Palm Tungstens coupled with the WinCE interface would be good.
• CF, SmartMedia and low-power 16-bit PCMCIA slots. No SD or MemoryStick please.
• Decent media player. Goes without saying
• Some sort of built-in scroller wheel like the ones on the Blackberry. I'd kill for that.
• GSM or some sort phone add-on card... use with headset? Dunno. I wouldn't mind lugging a cellphone still.

All this in a .7lb or so package. 1 inch thick and 8 inches wide. Now that would be shweet. I'd get rid of my laptop in a second.

The Newton was very cool and ahead of its time, but you need a friggin' Mac to use it effectively and that pretty much eliminates 90% of the computer user population.

Re:Newton revisited

[firstadopter.com]

I liked the old Gateway Handbooks too, they were the first really good sub-notebooks with usuable keyboards.

Re:Newton revisited

[Endive4Ever]

I like (still) my HP Omnibook 300 (from before 'Omnibook' was just the model name on a lot of crap at HP.) Designed and made by the HP Corvalis division (the business unit that made all the HP Calculators). It has a little 386sx-16 processor and 4 megs of RAM, but has a permanent version of Windows 3.1, Excel 4, and Word 2.0 burned onto a PCMCIA ROM card. Mine has a 10 meg flash card doublespaced to 20 megs. The real 'feature' of the thing, besides the nice keyboard and one of the best reflective grayscale VGAs ever made, is that it runs for hours on four AA alkaline batteries. Built in IRDA, too, so I can just hold it up to my LaserJet 5P to print.

It's very, very dated technology today, but it's the best-of-class from when it was new, and it contains HP technology that they essentially abandoned. I think it's the only ROMable Windows 3 ever created.

DecisionMaker sold out!

[RobertB-DC]

Darn! My Swatch has seen better days, so I was really excited about the "OVO DecisionMaker Watch":

I relish the impracticality of a watch that makes you sit through a 10-second animation before showing you the time, and which periodically goes into "naughty mode" where it distorts the time so that you can't read it until you give it a "corrective shake" that's hard enough to trip the built-in motion-sensor.

Well, the link from Cory "who the heck is this guy?" Doctorow's page was 404, so I googled around a bit and found out the bad news: they're sold out and can't get anymore. "Previously sold at Tokyoflash. Sorry, we can't get any more." Crap!

Time to add another saved search on eBay...

I challenge you to a gear fight

[mekkab]

Already there are a number of posts where people say "dude, you could replace 12 items with a single XXXX piece of gear"

I challenge these people to a usability test. Can a camera phone do justice to a 3 MP camera? PRobably not. Does it make sense to put an MP3 player in a phone or pda, if you are limited to 256 MB of music? NO! Is it comfortable to walk down the street taking pictures and listening to music on your laptop? That's a recipe for breaking your laptop.

It seems like Cory has the "convenience first, hard-core gear later" ethos down pat (heck, he even plans for those times when you have to use dial up! Egads!) First line is a camera that fits EASILY in a pocket (I love my Canon Powershot, but I need pants with roomy pockets!) and a phone, iPod in another, working our way down to a PDA and ultimately a laptop. His statement where he uses the laptop to recharge everything makes it sound even more like its his "base- station away from home" and less like an on-the-go device.

I mean, I could hook up my Visor Neo to my Cingular phone and ssh, but why when I have broadband at home, broadband at work, and don't travel? (did I just lose my membership in the Geek/Nerds Unified Technology Society by admitting that?)

Re:I challenge you to a gear fight

[Saint Stephen]

When I was a road warrior my thing was to travel lighter and lighter and lighter. 12"/3lb laptop/6hr battery->add a pound, good headphones (not earbuds, real headphones), ac, ethernet. Pair of underwear, shirt, deodarant, hairbrush. Money. Small Nokia phone.

Then start jetting around the planet. There's a zen towards having no stuff.

I got stopped coming back from Europe for a week because I had just a bookbag, and everyone else had two big giant suitcases. They figured I must be a smuggler.

Stuff I always carry

[kendric]

I always have a couple of nice pens on me, my TI-89 for the off chance I need to find the tax on an item, or a mugger demands all my money unless I can do a really tricky trig integral. An extra set of headphones in case an impromptu lan party were to spring up. My green laser to point and laugh at the people with the lesser red lasers. On my hand is my LAKS 256mb watch, filled with all sorts of neat stuff. I also carry a big package of mints in a Dilbert tin, for both my breath and others. And, finally in my pants pocket, the most versitle and usefull tool of them all, a wallet with cash and plastic.

Amen...

[Anonymous Coward]

but the comments were pulled because of excess goatse, not complaints about xeni. Maybe now that they have MT and can disable images, they'll come back

Re:Unlocked phones

[klausner]

I'm told that Cingular doesn't lock tri-band GSM phones, on the grounds you bought a tri-band cause you might want to use it in Europe. Makes some sense.

Also, unlocks for most phones that have been out for a while go for a couple of bucks on eBay.

My gadget bag contents.

[jafo]

I'm also a fair bit of a Road Warrior, but with a slightly different feel. I work at home, and most of my time spent away from the office is to local coffee shops or geek gatherings around town, with occasional trips to the next town or out of town. I make these trips probably an average of once a day, though, and carry my laptop with me everywhere.

So, here's some information about what I carry in my "kits":

In my pockets:

• An LG-5350 cell phone. I like that it's a flip-phone, which reduces the opportunity for breaking the display as I did with my previous Nokia phone. I bought it largely because it has a charging cradle that can be used with the USB cable to provide long-term net access if necessary.
• Casio Exilim EX-Z4 4 megapixel camera. I carry this literally everywhere with me. It's an amazingly capable camera that is no bother to carry everywhere. I selected it over the Optio S because of the much larger display.
• Photon Micro Light 2. I prefer this over the 3 because I've experienced much longer battery life and I think the user interface is better on the 2.

In my computer bag, which I carry 90% of the time I go anywhere. My computer bag is an Eagle Creek small shoulder bag with upgraded padded shoulder strap that includes a sticky ruberized side to reduce sliping off your shoulder.

• IBM ThinkPad X30. This is my primary computer, and I think it's a great mix of portable and useable. It's small, less than 4 pounds, but has a totally functional keyboard. People are amazed that I can carry a full computer in such a small bag. In fact, my bag's main compartment can carry two of these.
• Sennheiser PX-100 headphones. These aren't the smallest headphones, but they're very comfortable, sound fantastic for a $35 pair of headphones, and fold up into a small "eye glasses" carry case. These replaced some in-the-ear Sony headphones that were much smaller, but less comfortable and sounded dramatically worse.
• Knoppix. Fantastic for checking out hardware or "fixing" the public terminal at the coffee shop when it gets too infected with Windows viruses. Or when someone asks "What is Linux like?"
• Merlin C-201 CDMA card. This gives me net access in places where there's no net access.
• Prism-based Mini-PCI card in my laptop. I love this card because I can easily set it up to run in Access Point mode, and so for free I carry an Access Point with me everywhere. Great for allowing my SO to get net access via my laptop and the CDMA card. I have the laptop configured so when I insert the CDMA card it sets up as an AP and does NAT, with a DHCP server running on the WiFi network.
• USB cable for connecting my cell phone to my laptop. I almost never use this, unless the CDMA card is acting up.
• Slim AC power adapter. Even with my second battery, eventually I'll often need to charge up. Also useful since my SO carries so many books with her, that she's stopped carrying her own power.
• A Sharpie pen. Writes on nearly anything.
• A backup Sharpie pen. Yes, dual redundant Sharpies.
• Screen Wipes for when my display or glasses get too dirty. I currently use Techspray "zero charge screen and keyboard cleaners", which come individually packaged, but tend to leave an annoying residue behind unless you use some other dry wipe immediately (or sooner) after cleaning. Not entirely happy with the residue, but the packaging is great.
• Individually package hand wipes. Handy to have around.

Finally, I periodically have another larger bag which I carry in my car for our weekly Hacking Society or other geek meetings. It has a pile of stuff in it:

• HP 8-port switch (donated to Hacking Society by HP). Auto-MDIX so we don't have to worry about cross over cables.
• 25 foot extension cable.
• 6 different power strips. Handy for LUG meetings and at hotels where they often don't have enough power

Re:My gadget bag contents.

[outofpaper]

Ok I was holding back, not wanting to brag and all that but now that it has started here we go. Get ready for the most eclectic asortment of stuff you probably have ever herd of a geek caring around with them.

Pockets:

1 Palm Tungsten

1 Sony Clie (It's always good to have two palms incase you need to go over some data with some one that dosn't have one)

1 Toshiba e750 Wifi PocketPC (Curently runing that crappy Microsoft os. I'm going to put linux on here as soon as I get my hands on a 4 gig microdrive)

Keys (You have to open things)

Leatherman Mulitool (To open things keys can't and to solve othe problems)

1 UFO led light (I love led lights their batteries last so long and they are so bright)

Wallet

Hanging of of body:

1 Sandisk Cruzer Micro drive (for pasing files between my Palm or my e750 and a computer, normaly I leave a 64Mb card in here so that it's like one of thoughs normal usb drives)

1 Bluetooth USB Adapter (so I can bluetooth enable any computer that I have to)

1 32Mb "normal" usb drive (I got this to install linux on my xbox, now I have it on me for storage)

1 Pelican Case

1 large Jaguar Pack Sack (This is optional I only carry it when I'm going away for a few days from my base camp.)

Pelican Case:

1 Sony Cyber-Shot 3.3Mega Pixle Camera
(That's all there is in my Pelican Case and with good reason. It's a wonderfull camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. I love it very mutch)

Finaly in the optional Sack:

1 Xbox (I have linux installed on it so that I can use it as a normal computer. It's a realy good computer for what you pay. Pluss I can play a game or two on it with friends)

the cables for my xbox

2 Xbox controlers (One of witch is modified to act as a normal usb hub so that I can plug in my usbe devices)

1 Viewsonic usb keybord

1 USB Memstic reader

1 Xbox IR remote controle

1 oreilly book (to read on long Canadian bus rides)

some clothes and toletries

some sort of food (normaly a granola bar or two)

my list...like you cared

[slorge]

I'm a 3rd party Dell on-site tech. It comes in handy to have lots-o-stuff on the road. Here's my list of crap-in-a-car.

-Dell 400 CPI-A w/802.11b wifi pcmcia(loaded with Winamp 2.8 and a case full of MP3 CD's and a cassette adapter to play over the car stereo) in Dell's leather multi-pocketed breifcase type laptop case.

-Xircom 10-100 +56k PCMCIA nic (in pocket of case w/several boot disks) just in case

-Handy-dandy Knoppix 3.3 CD

-Kodak 3.2 MegaPixel cam
-1 Silver Jam Cam 3.0
-1 Blue Jam Cam 3.0 (you can never have too many sh*tty camera's)
-USB cable to transfer from camera's(in case Bigfoot's in a mood to pose). (No SD's or MMC's available)

-Palm Viix (in case on my belt)
-Palm Portable keyboard
-Sony Ericson t306 cel phone (on holster on my belt) w/ear bud
-Palm size Multimeter

-Lysol. (some people are pigs and so is there home (great grammar?!?!...I think I got my point across, though))

...that's the stuff in the front passenger seat, I won't even start on my trunk....

I carry wallet and keys. That's it.

[Lebofsky]

Not that this makes me feel special, and I certainly don't mean to sound righteous, but when I am done sitting in front of a computer all day I am done with technology. Obviously I understand the fun part of being wired, but it's just not for me.

I never owned a laptop, or a palm pilot. I certainly will never own a cell phone. I'd like a digital camera but never got around to researching which one to buy. Anyway, film works just fine for me still. Basically all I got is occasional use of my wife's iPod.

Does this make me less of a person in the eyes of /.?

-Lebofsky

Tri-corder....

[ciroknight]

Well, it's gonna sound retarded, but there is a point here. It's great to condense equipment completely, but there's really a point in which equipment doesn't need to be condensed.

For example, the iPod fits the perfect niche of being a personal media playback device and a storage device at the same time. Adding video to this device would be a bit of a hack, and quite inconvenient considering the UI that the iPod uses. So why not just build wireless into the thing and have it talk to a Newton-like device (Bluetooth of course, but we all know it's dead.. ;)

Next, I believe that Cameras go really well with Cellphones, but I don't believe they go well with PDA's. Reason: a cellphone is used for convenience of location, you can make a call from anywhere. Having a picture functionality built into that call is also awesome, because if I'm picking out a car from a lot, I can send pictures back to my mom of the things she wants to look at (color, price, etc), and have her call me back with what she thinks. Rolling this functionality into a PDA seems too clunky; overkill.

I also don't believe for functionality's sake that PDA's and Cellphones work well together, so I'd like to keep those seperate. The reason for this: you can't jot down a note or look on a calender while having a call without really straining yourself.

This being said: there are new camera phones built in with Bluetooth as well.. (see where I'm going yet?) Imagine having the circle completed with a tablet-PC like device, with a 4 inch LCD screen, a CD(-RW possibly? DVD-RW even?) drive to read in videos, movies, games, to use on the tablet pc. Use the iPod as the harddrive. Use WiFi where applicable, use the cellphone when not. Pictures from the cell can go directly to the iPod and be stored, or to a flash card reader (or dongle) on the PDA device. You set up a nice, Three way triangle of useful features, each vertex completed by the other two devices, but QUITE functional without them.

While it'd be nice to have them all in once device, it's just not at all possible these days it seems. While everything's a lot smaller, these smaller devices cost a lot more than most anyone would pay for. To roll ALL of the features above into one, you'd might as well buy a laptop. To roll in the features into the devices I've mentioned... well, all they'd really need to do is develop the PDA/Tablet-PC end, and roll Bluetooth/WiFi into the iPod, which, IMHO, will probably be the next revision.

Dreams maybe, but could be the very near future..

Consolidate you gadgets today!

[gad_zuki!]

I goto war, err work and school, with just a couple of multi-purpose gadgets:

1. A t-mobile sidekick. Sure it has some duct-tape helping keep the screen in place but it does all my email and its an excellent browser. It also has AIM and an ssh client. I leave the computer at home where it belongs. No more lugging around a laptop and hurting my back.

2. Neuros MP3 player/recorder. The thing transmits to FM so I don't need any damn cables. It has a 20gig drive in case I need to move data and don't want to burn a CD. (it also records line/in and has a built in mic. It also tunes FM)

3. A small case of CDs. Lots of utils and knoppix when things get serious.

4. A 128 meg USB drive. Contains (among other things) putty, tightvnc viewer so I access my windows machine, lots of school docs, some work stuff, etc.

5. Watch? I don't need no stinkin' watches. (there's one on the phone)

GPRS has latency probs.

[MsGeek]

I could hook up my Visor Neo to my Cingular phone and ssh

I wouldn't SSH over GPRS. Too much latency. GPRS works for web, email and IRC (the latter just good enough) but SSH overhead brings GPRS to its knees. Don't even think about playing games over GPRS.

Canadian cell phones...

[Nimloth]

Author keeps bitching about Tmobile and Fido cause the phones he bought from them are locked... Could you European folks just please check out the facts before you call these companies "scumbags" (from the article, about Fido).

The fact is that both Canadian and American phone companies have to fund phones to make them cheaper for consumers so they can get 'em at decent prices. Vtech phones may be shit, but you paid CDN $60, while it woulda cost you about US $200 to get it in Europe unlocked. So buy your crap and don't complain.

My list

[agentzer0]

At the risk of turning this into a geek's version of penile-measuring, here's mine:

* 20GB ipod (3G). Currently working through the entire LOTR audiobook set.

* Griffin iTrip radio adapter... great, unless you live in Boston where there are NO unused radio frequencies.

* Sony lightweight clip-over earphones. I need bigger ear canals or something.. Can't handle earbuds. Good sound, but did they really need to make the wire between left and right sides 2' long?

* Nokia 3650 w/ bluetooth earpiece. This phone also doubles as my PDA, synced via bluetooth to either Outlook or Evolution through gnome-bluetooth. Camera is decent for close-up shots, but colors always seem too saturated.

* Dell Latitude C840. One heavy mofo of a laptop, but my eyes are grateful for the huge screen. Trumobile (802.11g) inside as well, running fc1.

Swap knife blade out for travel?

[WillAdams]

Wasn't there a multi-tool which allows one to change the tools on it? If not, there out to be, or someone should make a small multi-tool which is certified for air travel. A Leatherman Micra sans knife blade (replace it w/ a nail file?) would be about right.

Failing that, buy a spare multi-tool and snap the knife blade off (terrible to do but...) --- last I checked the FAA regulations small eyeglass tool kits were okay, if pliers are as well, should work --- be sure to check the latest iteration of the FAA regs before travelling though.

For my part, the only time I didn't have my Leatherman w/ me was when travelling to Hawai'i last year --- normally I also keep a camera toolkit in a small leather ``Safety tool kit case'' which Levenger's was selling a few years back (way cool and highly recommended, has small wrenches and hex keys in addition to the normal screw drivers) but left that behind 'cause of the awl in it and since it goes beyond the afore-mentioned ``glasses repair kit''.

William

He forgot the biggest thing

[Twid]

Cory forgot to mention his enormous, throbbing ego, which he carries around with him all the time.

I saw Cory speak at a conference last year. He got a legitimate, well-reasoned, nicely worded question from the crowd. Because it didn't agree with his world-view, Cory belittled the guy and didn't address the questioner's point at all.

All Cory is about is promoting Cory. Remember a few months ago when he got press for being on the Atkins diet? Cory would get into necrophilia if he thought there was an upcoming "Necrophiliac Geek Trends" article in Wired that he might get mentioned in.

Cory forgot something on his list...

[4mn0t1337]

Yeah he's got a lot of gadgets, and does a pretty good job, efficency-wise, of transporting them. (I always take a look at what he's got with him this time, to see what good ideas he's got.) But all of those gadgets add up...

I roomed with Cory for a little bit, and I'll tell you right now, with that many geeks around, the mains outlet real estate becomes quite valuable. (I think I had no less than 10 items that needed recharging and Cory, even with USB chargers, must have had way more than I.) So it was a first-come-first-serve battle for recharging.

Kinda like an Oklahoma style land grab for power outlets.

Thankfully, he carries a mini surge protector that at least gives you a few more places to plug in.

Since I've seen him do that, I've taken to carrying one in my bag when travellling, and it makes a big difference. Hotels never have enough outlets.
And I guess a multiple outlet surge protector really isn't a "gadget" per se, but everything else in the bag can be made useless quite quickly without it...

Re:A reality check

[kurosawdust]

I have had the wonderful opportunity of being able to check out all the Connections shows on DVD from my local library (they're by far the best non-fiction TV programs I have ever seen), and I recall this particular bit. At the risk of splitting hairs, I don't believe he was hammering the point of everything we carry being mass-produced; rather, he was saying that if you ask the average person to empty his or her pockets, you'd find that pretty much everyone carries the same things (keys, money, pen, lighter, etc) that you do. His point was about homogeny, not technology.

Re:digital things are unique

[Anonymous Coward]

And you could have done the same, instead of purchasing the computer you are typing these messages on.