Netbooks, Google Docs and Travel

We brought a laptop with us on this trip. Technically, it’s a netbook; a Dell Inspiron Mini 10, which has been invaluable. If you read travel blogs, some people swear by having a laptop, and others curse the very idea of bringing along the technology when the goal is to escape.

We fall somewhere in between the two extremes: we do have a computer, but we don’t have a cellphone – a decision that most people might have switched around, but it works for us.

So far we’ve found that taking the netbook on treks is a mistake as it’s too much extra weight, plus it’s been nice to get away from everything (email included) for a week or more at a time. But for our day to day traveling the ability access wi-fi, save our daily photos for later uploading to Flickr and most importantly (though it was the one thing we never considered before we left) to be able to actually type on a standard QWERTY keyboard is fantastic.

We seriously hope that we return home with our laptop intact, but we’ve set things up with the assumption that along the way it will be trampled by a yak or stolen in a bazaar in India. Consequently we never have the computer remember any internet passwords, we only check email through our webmail (so no messages are ever stored on the hard drive) and if we were to lose it, the only thing that would be irreplacable would be a few odd notes, jotted down in Notebook files on the desktop.

What we have used, and started using in the months leading up to our trip, was Google Docs for tracking all of our travel plans and emergency contact information. It seems odd to make a big deal about the usefulness of Google docs, but in all the pre-trip research I did,  I never once heard anyone reference it and it has been absolutely indispensable for us, so I want to pass it along.

Just like its gmail service, Google provides a free, online word processor (like Word), spreadsheet (like Excel) and presentation program (like PowerPoint). If you already have a gmail account, you can log in with that, or create a free account at docs.google.com.

Google Docs provide all the basic functionality of Microsoft Office, but the big plus is that you’re able to access and edit the documents from any computer with internet access. You simply log on to your account and everything is right there. We have spreadsheets to track our rough itinerary for the year, word processing documents that list train, plane and ferry prices for different travel legs (along with specific train numbers and times), and important numbers like the international toll-free number to report a lost credit card.

For us this has meant that when we decide not to take our netbook on a trek, we can use the computer in the hostel to double check our itinerary or find that email address or phone number that we forgot to write down in our journal.

It also means that while we’re doing research for an upcoming leg of travel; for example the train ride from the Czech Republic to Germany to catch the ferry that will take us to Finland, where we switch to a second ferry to Estonia – and we have too many windows open the little netbook can’t handle it all and freezes up and crashes… we’re fine because Google Docs automatically saves everything as you work (not that that has happened… a few times).

In anycase, an odd post to be sure, but a ridiculously useful product!