Other Mobile Devices | Macs on the Go

Speaking from personal experience, Road Warriors sometimes become slightly obsessed with collecting gadgets that can enhance their hi-tech and digitally connected lifestyle. All you really need is your laptop, but we'll mention three other mobile devices that you may want to include in your travel bag if you have an urge to crank it up a notch with the Road Warrior thing.

iPod

The iPod is not only the most popular music and video player available, it can also serve as a portable hard disk to backup or transport files.

1.	Plug in your iPod to your Mac.
2.	Open iTunes preferences and choose the "iPod" icon in the toolbar (below-left).
3.	Click the "Music" tab, then check "Enable disk use."
4.	When you choose "Automatically update all songs and playlists," the contents of your iPod are replaced with the iTunes contents of the computer you connect to. You may not want to do this. To prevent automatic updating of songs and playlists, choose the option to "Manually manage songs and playlists."
5.	Click ok. An iPod icon is displayed on your Desktop (right). Double-click the icon to open it as an iPod window (belowright). Drag folders or files from your computer to the iPod window to copy them to the iPod.

PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) Device

A Wi-Fi enabled PDA, such as a Palm handheld device, is handy to have when a laptop is too big to carry around. However, be aware that the built-in browser in some pdas may not support certain kinds of web pages (such as pages with pop-up windows), which may prevent you from logging in to your .Mac account or into a paid Wi-Fi account at a wireless hotspot.

If you decide to use a Wi-Fi PDA instead of a laptop while on the go, consider buying a portable keyboard to make typing less frustating. Portable keyboards fold to a very small size and communicate with the PDA through a wireless infrared signal.

GPS (Global Positioning System) Device

A GPS is not only fun, it's incredibly useful when you're traveling in unfamilar cities and countries. My GPS has kept us from getting lost on deserted New Mexico backroads in the middle of the night, and it helped us find our way back to the hotel after walking around Rome for hours.

In the past, connecting a GPS to a Mac was a challenging experience (if not downright unpleasant). It's not as if you can't connect a GPS to a Mac, it's just not as simple as it should be, some of the best GPS software is not available for Mac OS X, and we don't have space enough here to address all of the issues. However, things have been changing for disenfranchised Mac users lately, and Garmin (one of the leading makers of gps devices) recently announced that they are adding support for the Mac platform. This is really exciting news for Mac/gps owners. Soon we'll be able to gps ourselves silly. Meanwhile, you can get a lot of GPS use out of your Mac with a little help from Google Earth (see pages 207).