Although I’ve strongly advocated brining one’s ipod along when traveling, I am not generally a fan of lugging lots of gadgets along with you on the road. First of all, they can be a big, messy encumbrance. Wires and cables and buttons that get all sticky. And the way your pack bulges with all these things and you have to take care of them and keep them dry and, well, fuggedaboudit.
So I am a bit dubious about this article that tries to name the top ten travel gadgets .Some of them make a modicum of sense: the GPS watch, for example. Now I have no idea whether or how well the watch works, but suffice to say it would be great to get directions and location coordinates directly on your watch. But what about the Wi-Fi finder? Sure ,it’s nice to know where a hot spot is, but do you really need to carry around something like that? Another rather absurd item is this digital luggage that tells you its weight so that you know whether you’re going over required limits at the airport. Come on.
For me, the best piece of digital travel equip to have, which has not been invented yet ,is a combination GPS/encyclopedia that not only tells you here you are, but something about the place ,little bits of history or arcana that would really add to a travel experience. Alas, that has not been invented yet. But I bet someday we’ll have one.