I also carry my own telephone connection cord just in case I need to reach
way back in time and use the built-in modem of my laptop to communicate.
Many telephones in hotel rooms now offer a place to plug your computer into
the system. Using the phone system, of course, is generally the least preferred
means of communication these days — much slower than a WiFi connection
and much, much slower than a wired Ethernet link.Although you may find an Ethernet cable and a phone cord waiting for you at
your hotel or temporary office, you can’t count on that. And there is no guar-
antee that the cables will be undamaged. The well-prepared laptop traveler
brings his or her own.A USB Memory Key ......................................................................................
A memory keyis a small block of flash memory attached to a USB connector.
The first designs envisioned these devices as key rings holding tens of
megabytes of data while some more current designs include smart pens,
pointers, and assorted geegaws.Flash memoryis a near-permanent form of RAM; data written to it does not
require a constant application of power. I say near-permanentfor two reasons:
First of all it can be erased and rewritten by a computer or other electronic
device, and second because it could— with an emphasis on the maybe— be
accidentally erased or corrupted by a strong magnetic or electrical field. That
said, I have found them to be extremely robust and reliable.When these devices first came out I thought of them as great solutions in
search of a problem. Why would I need a little plug-in key that could store a
relatively tiny 64MB or 256MB of data when I could connect by WiFi, wired
Ethernet, or by one of half a dozen other physical media?But in recent years I have lost track of the number of times I have found great
utility in one of these little guys. The principle use: as a durable and conve-
nient modern version of the sneakernet. (In the early days of the personal
computer, the easiest way to transfer a file from one machine to another was
to copy it to a floppy disk and then walk it over to the other machine — geeks
wore sneakers — and copy the file.)Allow me to explain with a few examples of how I have used a memory key:I had a file I had written on my laptop that I wanted to send by e-mail
from an Internet cafe. There was no WiFi in the room, and there was no
provision in the cafe for me to connect my laptop to the wired Ethernet.328 Part VI: The Part of Tens