Traveling with US gadgets in the EU...

I'm frequently between Europe and the US--and I find some gadgets travel better than others. I travel light, but bring a few must-haves for my field.

That's a Black MacBook (aka "BlackBook"), my Vertu and an iTouch. The BlackBook is excellent for travel--when I take the energy efficient settings and keep the display lowish, I can cover a good part of worktime on a transatlantic flight with only one spare. I keep the cord on the power adapter and take two International Power adapters. One for Ireland and the UK where the power plugs are brickish with 3 square prongs--and one for Continental Europe (France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland for me) with two pin-shaped prongs. The BlackBook takes the 220V foreign power fine (doesn't need a voltage inverter), but I've noticed that batteries in the UK/Ireland take twice as long to charge.

What about connectivity? If I'm in a home, apartment or hotel, I make sure it has wireless or I stay somewhere else. I have US T-Mobile Hotspot account as well as a Germany T-Mobile account and UK T-Mobile Hotspot account. In Switzerland I buy 30-day passes on their hotspot network (the name eludes me right now). The fees vary from country-to-country with the UK's the most expensive at £40 ($80) for 30 days. That said--when you get into Heathrow from a 9 hour trip and you head downtown on the Paddington Express (which I highly recommend)--it's well worth $80 to have 15 minutes of highspeed connectivity to catch up. In Ireland I have an O2 mobile broadband subscription and in the US I have ATT mobile broadband as well as a dataplan for my phone which doubles as an EDGE blue-tooth modem. Yowza! I haven't gotten to phones yet either!

By the way--the worst connectivity I've found is in the South of Spain. We were staying with friends with no broadband. I couldn't find an Internet cafe that stayed open past my boys' bedtime. My Irish O2 broadband dongle didn't get signal. I ended up borrowing my wife's US ATT iPhone to do webmail as a last resort... likely the most inefficient web browsing I've ever done.  After my troubles I did look online and found a few outfits that rent a broadband connection (with very limited maximum usage) for a week or longer in Spain--and I'll likely try this in the future.

Phones... Hah! I started this post to share some of my transatlantic finds--and I'm realizing I have more of my own questions now than answers. That said, if you can solve this one, I'm ecstatic. Here's how I work my phones:

1. I travel with a Vertu. I bought it in a moment of weakness in the flagship Nokia store in Chicago. It's feature-free, never breaks, and always makes calls. I love it! 
2. I have a SkypeIn in the US, UK and Ireland. I give this number out. SkypeIn gives you a local number for folks to dial to reach you on Skype--but SkypeOut will then forward this call to a number you provide. Effectively shifting the International calling fees to me (at Skype rates) rather than my callers.
3. Depending on the Country I'm in, I forward this SkypeIn number to my Country-specific phone account. In the US, this is T-Mobile (I've sued them and won--and nothing positive to say about them) for lack of an effective alternative. Before I leave the US, I set my SkypeOut to the local number of the Country I'm landing in--say the UK. In London I swap my US SIM for a UK Vodafone SIM with the inbound number I set SkypeOut to forward my calls to. Note that my Vertu is a quadband, unlocked worldphone so the SIM swapping is relatively straightforward.

Now--this arrangement works great for some things. My callers make a local call, saving them International charges and hassle tracking down which country and number I'm on. I save on my calls--since I'm using a plan local to where I'm calling, I don't charge up roaming fees (which I've had at £2 or more per minutes ($4+).

And it has its drawbacks--depending on the Country I'm in and the caller's Country--I can see a noticeable delay in calls to the extent that it can cause some confusion. And often more importantly--in Europe there's a lot of texting (aka "SMS messaging") that goes on and I've found I've missed a number of texts sent to my SkypeIn number. In the end, for frequent callers, I give them both numbers and tell them to only use my local number when they know I'm in the Country.

Also--I have to keep a number of SIM cards with me in my travels, keeping track of which SIM is for which Country and which number. I also have to keep them charged--as it's not easy getting non-prepay accounts when you are a non-resident (sorry for the double negative, but that's the accurate way to put it). I've checked this arrangement with my tech buddies that travel and most of them have setup something similar to what I have now. If there's a silver-bullet that makes this trivial and I've managed to miss it, I'd love to hear what it is. Charging my Vertu? The charger takes the EU 220V without a problem and I swap the power adapter from my BlackBook as needed--the Vertu keeps two day's charge with a few hours of power.

Finally, I take with me my iTouch (iPod Touch). It carries all my audiobooks for the plane, family photos, my contacts--wifi email and in a pinch some web browsing. Really a killer device to have with me when I'm not bringing my laptop. Care of the iTouch? It charges on USB from my BlackBook--so all is well there.

Travel is a permanent part of my life and finding the right way to travel with my gadgets and staying connected is an evolving puzzle. I'd love feedback from others that have made progress and I'll continue to share my updates.