|
Tech Toys For Your Summer Road Trip, Part 1 “Road trip!” These two words have always held magical powers in my family. No sooner are they uttered than our adrenalin starts pumping and our hands start twitching for the steering wheel and the feel of the open highway. The word on the street is that this summer will set new road-trip records, as American’s drive off in droves, despite soaring gas prices and an unseasonable drop in transcontinental airfares. |
|
On loan from General Motors, the 2004 Envoy XUV is an eye-opener. Press a button inside, and a large portion of the roof retracts. Suddenly, the SUV becomes a pickup truck. However, the particular pièce de résistance that caught my attention is the latest upgrade to the OnStar satellite communications system, providing improved speech recognition capabilities for dialing the integrated cellular phone system using your voice. Instead of having to leave a gaping pause between each spoken number, drivers can now talk naturally. More importantly, thanks to a recent arrangement with Verizon Wireless, you can now use the same mobile number in and out of the car. An integrated Verizon phone lets you make calls from outside the vehicle, then seamlessly switch to the built-in hands-free communications system when you get back in the car. . .er, the truck. . .oh, you know what I mean. The new system is up and running in a few markets, and should be launched broadly around the United States in the fall.
Another very pleasant surprise has been the XM Satellite Radio that comes installed in the vehicle. Two-hundred-plus stations with mostly commercial-free music can quickly become addictive. If you are a fan of less-than-mainstream musical genres (in my case, bluegrass and acoustic folk), you will be in heaven. Who knew that this many genres and sub-genres even existed? You may even discover a new and life-changing musical influence in hard-to-classify channels, such as “Squizz,” “fungus,” or “Fred.” The satellite-fed audio signal is excellent.
Now on to the entrée: Portables, and lots of them. Here are some of the devices that no gadget-greedy road-tripper should be without.
GPS NAVIGATION
First, it’s important to always know where you are – preferably with pinpoint accuracy – and how to get from there to wherever you’re going. For this, I rely on the trusty StreetPilot III satellite navigation unit from Garmin. The 16-color LCD panel displays excellent maps and turn-by-turn directions, and the attached speaker backs it up with voice prompts. The features are too numerous to list here, but there is one item that is an absolute godsend for parents of young children: Accurate, up-to-the-second arrival data. So every time a little voice asks, “When are we gonna get there?” you can simply glance at your dash-mounted unit and respond along the lines of “Three hours, 27 minutes and 13 seconds.” The subsequent silence is, indeed, golden.
PORTABLE COMPUTERS
While the StreetPilot gives helpful location-based information on where to find everything from the nearest potty stop to boat rentals, planning and executing a serious road trip requires some serious computing power. For this trip, I’m trying out three PCs, the Gateway M275XL convertible laptop/tablet PC, and the ruggedized Itronix GoBook, and the Sharp Actius MM20. Both the Gateway and the Itronix models run Microsoft’s Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. The Sharp unit runs Windows XP Home Edition With the $2,100 Gateway, we’re talking about a conventional-looking 5.7-pound portable with onboard DVD player/CD Recorder, crisp 14.1-inch XGA TFT screen, 60GB hard disk and 512MB of memory, all running on top of a snappy 1.8GHz Intel Centrino processor. With the full-size keyboard and integrated touchpad pointing device, this clamshell-style desktop replacement machine has everything a professional “knowledge worker” needs. Now this is where it gets interesting: Swivel the screen around on its rotating hinge, snap it in place, and you have a sleek clipboard-style tablet PC, ready to tuck into the crook of your arm. In this configuration, it’s perfect for sitting in the passenger seat and drilling down on your custom itinerary, using software, such as Microsoft Streets & Trips. As a tablet, it also makes a handy and portable DVD player. What about when the kids want to watch a movie, or play a game on the computer? That’s where the Itronix GoBook comes into play. After losing one laptop to a thirsty child, who became engrossed in a Disney DVD and accidentally spilled a bottle of spring water onto the keyboard, I’ve gotten hard-nosed about lending one of these precious portables to the Little Ones. That’s what intrigued me about the ruggedized unit from Itronix. Made to withstand rough treatment from cops and combat troops, there seemed to be a shred of hope that it could even stand up to the punishment of a family vacation. With it’s die-cast magnesium casing and weather-sealed I/O ports, the 3.7-pound PC tablet is designed to be practically impervious to rain, snow, wind, dust, shock, vibration and chemical exposure. The brochure does not say anything about sticky suckers, half-slurped juice boxes, or the other horrors that abound in a truly hostile environment, such as the back seat of a family SUV. It does say that the $3,000 unit boasts an 866MHz Pentium III, a 30GB hard drive and up to 640MB of memory. It also supports a range of wireless networking, including 802.11b, Bluetooth, and wide area networks such as CDMA and GPRS. When I told the Itronix product manager I wanted to go on live television and pour a bottle of water on his PC, he offered to do me one better. “Use a coke,” he said. “It’s stickier.” I accepted the challenge (although I substituted orange soda instead of coke), and the tablet PC is still running like a top. (OK, a sticky top.) The Sharp Actius MM20 represents yet another category of notebook computer: the super lightweights (a.k.a., “ultraportables”). Weighing in at an almost imperceptible two pounds, this is the computer to take everywhere. The 10.4-inch XGA TFT LCD screen looks great, and the standard battery is designed to give you about 3 hours of life for the 1GHz Transmeta Efficeon TM6000 processor. The CPU is backed up by 512MB of DDR SDRAM and a 20GB hard drive. Wired and wireless networking is built in, and you’ll need them if you want to get access to any new software or data, because the machine comes with no optical or floppy drives. However, for pure, bare bones Windows computing in an incredibly sleek and lightweight design, the Actius MM20 is hard to beat.
###
What are you taking on your tech road trip? Address your e-mail to steve@TVTechToys.com
|
|
This year we’ll be traveling in style, equipped with every conceivable digital electronic convenience. Our brand-new Tech Trailer awaits us, laden with tech toys and gadgets galore. Let’s take a peek inside.
TRANSPORTATION
As you approach the fabulous Kovsky Kabana hybrid travel trailer, you may notice that it has a few low-tech twists of its own. The Keystone Cabana is as portable as the gadgets inside, designed to be extremely lightweight and versatile. The “hybrid” moniker indicates that this towable unit is a cross between a tent and a conventional trailer, with hard sides that spring out in canvas enclosures, giving you added space and the illusion of sleeping outdoors – without fighting off the bugs and waking up with an aching back. The tow vehicle also deserves an honorable mention. |
