Do you travel for work often? Or perhaps you’re hoping to get a new job, but it will involve you needing to travel for it. Either way, travelling can take up a lot of time – time that would be wasted if you weren’t able to work on the go. More and more businesses have been focusing on technologies that enable users to work while travelling, or else technologies for remote working (which has a lot of overlap with work-travel solutions). For example, the IT support services London provider TechQuarters provide their customers includes plenty of remote work solutions that are also ideal for users that want to get work done while on the train, or waiting at the airport, etc.
To enable on-the-go work, you’ll need the right hardware solutions. Below is a list of the tools you might want to look into.
Hardware
The hardware you have will be what enables you to work. If you don’t have your own hardware, you’ll have to rely on resources in your settings – if you’re lucky, you’ll find an internet café you can go to. But it’s best not to count on that.
1. Laptop
A laptop PC offers the perfect balance of power, performance, and portability. You can purchase laptops small enough to slip into a backpack; or you may need to buy a bag specifically designed for housing a laptop, if the model you choose is on the larger side. These days, a work-capable laptop may cost as little as under £200. Make sure to check what kind of work you’ll be doing on the road, and ensure your laptop is powerful enough to support that work.
2. Mobile
Alongside a laptop, a mobile smartphone is a valuable tool for work. For really lightweight work, you can even rely on a decent smartphone – such as a Samsung Galaxy or an iPhone. Making and receiving calls will be the primary way of staying in touch with colleagues, and the range of apps available for mobile will also make working on a phone possible, when space or time is limited.
3. Tablet
A good intermediate device between a laptop and a mobile smartphone would be a tablet – such as an iPad or a Microsoft Surface. They pack in a considerable amount more power than a mobile phone, but are even more lightweight and portable than a laptop. If you have the money to invest, you can get a tablet that is even capable of supporting intensive workflows, such as video editing or graphic design.
4. Headset
If you’re travelling for work, you might find yourself in noisy environments, or even quite environments where you don’t want to disturb the peace. In both cases, this is where a headset comes in handy; it will guarantee clear audio for you and your colleagues during business calls or video meetings. Ensure you find a headset with a built-in microphone.
5. Power Bank
The last thing you want when you’re on the road is for your work devices to run out of juice. A dead battery when you’re travelling is a major inconvenience – especially if you don’t know when you’ll next find a reliable power source to use. Power banks are immensely handy in these situations. If you simply need to be reachable by your work while you’re travelling, then you can get away with a modest power bank – somewhere in the realm of 10,000mAH or 20,000mAH will get you between 1 and 2.5 charges of a smartphone. However, if you need to be able to charge a laptop, you will need to look at power banks that have a minimum of 20,000mAh capacities.
6. External Hard Drive
Storage is important when working. If you’re relying on your laptop’s internal storage, then you may be compromising your PC’s performance. Having an external hard drive is great for keeping your laptop’s storage freed up, and it has many other worthwhile use cases too. For example, if you’re looking to do work like video editing or graphic design – or any work that involves using resource-intensive software – then it is useful to connect an external hard drive to your laptop for data caches.
