My favorite gadget, and my gadget bag

While I'm in the US, my nokia 6620 is my favorite gadget, but while I'm traveling I'd say my favorite is a music player. I love my ipod, it has a fantastic interface, good simple features, and it synchs really easily with itunes, it's not my favorite gadget. For long trips it's definitely what I use for music, but if I only take one player with me somehwere, I take my archos gmini400. The thing plays video, right now I have an episode of scrubs, garden state, an episode of reno 911, a couple invader zim episodes, some southpark, and the hudsucker proxy. It also plays games, the thing is bundled with a couple crappy little games, but they're great airport time killers. It is of course also an mp3 player with passable interface, not a real ipod competitor but definitely usable. The most useful thing about it is that it's an external usb hard drive and it stores it's music and videos as normal files within a mac and pc accessible filesystem. This means I can swap files with anyone (without having to use 3rd party software), and keep backups of all of my important work docs on the thing. Finally, it has a standard hardware interface. The same cable that I use for the archos can be used to synch and charge my blackberry, or to power my portable speakers, one less thing to carry on little overnighters. The one gripe I have with the gmini is that it won't charge from the usb port which I feel is fairly boneheaded but overall it's the favorite thing in my gadget bag



Travel Gadget Bag

• IBM Thinkpad T40- before I got one from the office I never would have considered it, but with it's reasonable weight, exceptional battery life, ease of connections ( wifi, bluetooth, IR, gigabit ethernet, usb, even parallel), awesome res (14000x1050), good trackpad, and great keyboard I'm completely sold on the thing
• Blackberry 7290- longest leash in the world, but I'm completely addicted. I get my email instantly and full downloads of the directory from the office. All that and bluetooth connectivity.
• Nokia 6620- I opted for the flat internet plan so when I'm in the states I use this thing obsessively, I've even got putty on it for when I absolutely, positively need to access a host remotely. I slapped a half gig MMC into it and I use the camera and video recorder all the time. For multimedia I have a couple tracks, games, and tv episodes on the thing for when I'm stuck. Hell in a pinch I can use it to backup files over bluetooth, usb, or just a mem card reader. If I had a good international plan and it was quad band this would be my one gadget to rule them all, but as stands it's second fiddle to the gmini
• Archos ArcDisk 20- this extremely slim portable hard drive has been a lifesaver. completely powered off the usb port with a usb2 interface it's great for moving massive files back and forth, but also great for general backups. That and it's pretty
• Minolta Dimage x20- pretty basic slim 2 megapixel camera with AA batteries. I'm not much of a photographer, I just needed something small and basic where I could take decent quality pictures. Despite often having it with me I'm terrible about taking pics
• Apple iPod 15gb 3rd gen- needs no description
• Creative laptop speakers- I don't remember the exact model, but these usb/battery powered speakers have been great with the ipod and for watching movies on the laptop. A great addition since I have no tv in my current apartment
• Archos gmini400 -see above

The one thing that's really missing is some sort of portable projector, but mitsubishi's pocket led lit projector due out this summer will soon be part of my kit for sure. Other things I'm watching for are an apple handheld of some sort, or the archos pma430, cause my phone screen really isn't ideal for full web browsing