JourneyLearning: - Your journey guide

That’s what international business travelers behave like when they’re on the road. Jittery with jetlag and disoriented after a marathon flight, they crave their next e-mail fix. Without a nearby phone jack to plug in to, they become despondent, moody and withdrawn.What a perfect opportunity for a scam.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The laptop computer industry is $16 billion-a-year business, according to International Data Corp. Connecting all of those portables to the Internet is a top priority for new users, especially if they’re business travelers. It should hardly come as a surprise, then, that the hardware manufacturers peddling everything from filters and line tester to adapters are enjoying double-digit sales growth.

Growing Suspicions

But the add-on expansion now appears to be outpacing the laptop boom itself, and I think I know why. Corporate travelers need to retrieve their electronic messages at predictable intervals, which isn’t a problem in North America, where the standard phone jack is — well, standard. (It’s referred to in tech-lingo as the RJ-11. Just unplug your phone to see what one looks like.)

But what if you travel overseas? Well, then you’ve got a problem. Not only are the jacks almost always incompatible with yours, but many of the phones are still hardwired, meaning you can’t unplug them at all. Add to that the annoying practice of tax impulsing, which is an intermittent 16-kilohertz tone used to register usage in some European countries — one that can summarily disconnect you from the ‘Net — and you get the picture.

Put simply, laptop users in general, and business travelers in particular, are ripe for a con. They’ll buy anything to prevent them from missing their next e-mail hit.

Just before I left for a year-long Fulbright fellowship in Germany, I tried to buy a reliable e-mail connection. Half of Germany still uses communist-era East German jacks; the other half is hooked up via the elongated West German jacks. Many phones are hardwired. Still others are digital, meaning that my analog modem is a no-go. Oh yes, then there’s the tax impulsing. They’ve got that, too.

A sales rep for one of the peripheral manufacturers — I won’t say which one, because I’m pretty sure they all do this — explained the connectivity obstacles and offered a long list of recommended hardware.”Do you think I need all of that?” I asked.”You want to be able to connect, don’t you?” she replied.

She had a point. I couldn’t live without e-mail and she knew it. I ended up buying a tax-impulse filter, adapters for both German jacks, an acoustic coupler (for hardwired phones) and a line tester, plus a few spare wires that might come in handy.

After my year in Germany ended, the acoustic coupler was practically unused, the East German jack was still in the box and so was the filter. The “better safe than sorry” philosophy had cost me dearly but enriched the hardware seller.

Playing It Safe

Rada Iyengar, a marketing manager for peripheral manufacturer TeleAdapt Inc. in San Jose, Calif., assured me that most customers actually need what they buy. What’s more, she insists the “better safe than sorry” philosophy, which most of the industry subscribes to, is sound.

“Most business travelers don’t have the luxury of not being able to connect,” she told me. “When you’re talking about a million dollar deal, you can’t not access your e-mail.”But another way of seeing it is that road warriors are hopelessly hooked to e-mail and they can’t imagine life without the joke of the day or Dilbert, so they absolutely must connect, cost be damned.

For the folks whose life depends on a reliable connection (reasons aside) I’ll concede that the filters and plugs can be a worthwhile investment. Carole Roberts, a San Francisco technology consultant, comes to mind. Her overseas travels have taken her to Mexico, Greece and Kenya, among other places. She estimates that she’s shelled out about $300 for connectivity equipment.

“As a business traveler, I’m not always sure what my circumstances are going to be. It helps to know that you can connect,” she says.For others — and it’s not easy to tell when — the add-ons are completely unnecessary. Public relations executive Jim Caruso counts himself among the connectivity minimalists.

“After traveling to over 20 countries throughout Asia and Europe, I can’t think of a single one where I could not get into the phone system using a standard phone cord,” says the Roswell, Ga., executive. “Truth is you rarely if ever need any additional equipment overseas. I would never recommend that somebody buy an add-on for the phone plugs.”

Fear is the Enemy

If you’re on a generous expense account and you’re expected to pick up your e-mail messages every few hours, then I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t buy all the toys you can find. Dominique Brown, director of marketing at peripheral manufacturer Road Warrior International Inc. in Santa Ana, Calif., says businesses rarely balk at shelling out big bucks for the devices these days.

“Companies are buying extra modems, line testers and travel kits for their employees, because the equipment isn’t optional anymore,” she says. “It’s essential.”

However, if you’re picking up the tab instead of the shareholders, take a moment to consider how afraid you really are. What are the chances you’ll not connect from your hotel in London, where lots of rooms already feature RJ-11s, for example? What difference is it going to make? Is the equipment worth the expense?

Didn’t think so. If worse comes to worst, suggests Peter Geier of modem manufacturer Eicon Technology Inc. in Carollton, Texas, any business traveler can access a phone without a fancy adapter or an expensive acoustic coupler. Elemental wiretapping, which takes a little practice, can save you hundreds of dollars.

As some of you know, I’ve been toggling between two computer operating systems for the last few months. After loyally supporting the Apple OS for 14 years, I broke down and bought one of Bill Gates’ machines in October, but continued to work on a Mac most of the time.

I knew it would be impractical to straddle the proverbial fence indefinitely. It’s very difficult to get a Mac and a PC to talk to one another, to share information or even peripherals. I knew that a time would come when I would have to decide between the two systems.

I think it’s wrong to support any product based on principle alone. I had been buying one Mac after another simply because I didn’t like Microsoft. I sometimes chuckle at people who won’t drive a Mercedes-Benz because it’s built by Germans or who boycott brands like Nike because they suspect some of its sneakers are assembled in Third World sweatshops. What do they end up with? They buy an American luxury car that breaks down in a couple of years and needs to be replaced, or they get their clothes at a “Made in the USA” store where everything is overpriced in order to pay off our unionized workers.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for principles in our market economy. Only that these standards alone can’t guide my decisions. I needed to temper my principles with a healthy dose of practicality.

Bottom line: keeping the Mac around just wasn’t feasible. I still don’t care for Bill Gates, and I hope that if the government doesn’t free us from his OS tyranny, then the emerging Linux OS will. Until then, my Mac’s gotta go.

Once I dealt with the Gates baggage, I was free to explore the possibility of hitting the road with a PC laptop. Now I could use a whole line of software products that don’t exist for the Mac -­ applications that help me connect in a hotel or airport lounge, track my meetings and store my contacts. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to bid adieu to my 1992 Mac version of Now Contact, which is now owned by a division of Qualcomm. It was as awful as it was antiquated.

The PC laptops were also lighter and cheaper than the newer Mac notebooks. Granted, they’re more difficult to configure and at times trickier to operate (the Gateway FireAnt that I’m currently evaluating isn’t anywhere near as elegant as my last Mac portable). However, if it’s down to a question of weight versus ease of use, and you travel a lot, then weight wins almost every time.

But what really put the PC over the top was the version of Office 2000 that Microsoft sent me. You’ll remember that I complained bitterly when a beta version of Office 2000 destroyed my hard drive and forced me to waste half a day re-installing Windows ‘98. Now I’m compelled to eat my words: the actual Office 2000 is great. The programs run fast, they’re intuitive and best off all, they do everything that my Mac version of Office can do ­- and then some.

It was, perhaps the and then some that got me to thinking: what do I need this Mac for? My Mac version of Outlook Express, for instance, is a scrawny cousin to its big brother on the PC. It seems like I can do twice the amount of work in half the keystrokes on the mail program in Office 2000. What’s the point of keeping the Mac around when even the latest version of Eudora doesn’t match up to Outlook?

Even as I pondered these questions, I also came to understand the limitations of the latest Mac OS. Although I had adequate memory on my Macintosh G3 tower, certain programs didn’t want to run together. I could keep my word processor and browser up at the same time, or my word processor and my contact manager, but I couldn’t run my contact manager and browser simultaneously. After I installed OS 8.5, my printer stopped working too. Then my mouse quit on me.

I wrote Apple a polite letter on March 29, outlining the problems and asking it to either replace or exchange my unit. The response? There was none. On April 18 I wrote to Apple again, explaining that “I am a loyal user of Apple products and am accustomed to a high level of customer service. I have reciprocated by purchasing a new Apple computer for my office almost every year since 1985.”

Again, no answer. Not so much as a peep.

I don’t know if its rebounding stock price is making Apple arrogant or unresponsive or both, but I’d be lying if I said its lack of a timely response didn’t have anything to do with my decision to ditch my Mac. You can only make an overpriced, overweight and underserviced computer for so long, and then it’s curtains for you.

I for one have had it with my Mac. It doesn’t travel well, there’s very little software available for it, it freezes with alarming regularity and no one’s around to help me when I need it. So what if its next operating system, OS X, walks on water? Now my principles have shifted, and I won¹t buy an Apple because I don’t particularly care for Steve Jobs.

My money’s on Linus Torvalds and his Linux penguins to save me from this mess.

I guess you could twirl a globe and point your finger, but then you might end up in the middle of a jungle or on top of Mt. Everest. I think there are two clear ways to approach the matter:

1. Do a little research, checking your budget and travel wishlist.
2. Listen to your family and friends and hear where their dream vacation would take them.

Last year, my mother-in-law, Alice (Dan’s mom) told my daughter, Nicole, that one of her “Bucket List” destinations was Lourdes, France. Alice is a very religious person and I was surprised to know that she hadn’t been to Lourdes before. When Nicole told Dan his mom’s wishes, he immediately decided that this would be her summer trip in 2010. Usually the Sullivan family plans a trip each year and when I say the Sullivan’s, I mean a lot of people.

Dan’s mom and dad had seven kids and all of their kids had 17 grandchildren between them. So with just immediate family, we can usually fill a bus. In the past, the Sullivan family has been to Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Prince Edward Island, and on a cruise to Alaska, just to mention a few of our family trips.

For our trip to Lourdes with Alice, Dan invited only his siblings, their spouses and his mom, so this year we will be a smaller group than usual, it will be more personal for her, something to share with her kids and their spouses.

When Dan decided to go the France (we leave July 28), he thought it would be fun to incorporate Paris into the itinerary as well as Lourdes, so we are really looking forward to our trip to France. Paris is such a fun city, with its sidewalk cafes and culture. I’m especially looking forward to taking a nice walk along the beautiful Seine.

Lourdes is a wonderful place to visit. It is the home of Bernadette Soubirous who saw the apparition of “Mary” in a grotto. Alice has read the book The Song of Bernadette and has also watched the movie by the same name many times.

I personally have been to Lourdes twice. The first time I went was in 1969 and then again in 2005. Both times, I was moved to tears by this wonderful place. I look forward to going again, and I am very excited to be sharing it with Alice. I know that this will be the trip of a lifetime.

So there you go. It’s easy to plan where your next vacation can be. Just listen to your mom, or your grandmother, or your husband or wife. What is on their “wish list” of places to go and things to see? If Nicole hadn’t listened to Alice, chances are we would be going somewhere else.

Choosing and planning this trip is a dream come true for all of us, but will mean more because of Alice and her desire to go there someday. Someday is almost here!

My first exposure to the travel biz (way before Collette Vacations) came when I was probably 14 or 15. My dad brought home a brochure for an Alaskan cruise. I remember him being really excited by the idea.

He wasn’t a guy who did that kind of thing. Extremely careful with money, he always preached saving to me. I still have the same bank account we started together when I was a toddler. “You never know when you might need it,” he used to say.And he was right. His careful planning allowed the family to weather our share of ups and downs.

Beautiful or not, Alaskan seemed so far way.  This would take some serious convincing of Mom. My parents hadn’t even been on a trip since their honeymoon. But Dad was closing in on 50 and I think he felt this would be money well spent, an investment in their lives.

As is often the way, life kept moving. The brochure got tossed around, preliminary plans where made. And then Dad got sick. There were days and nights (and weeks) in the hospital. True to his nature he fought to keep working, putting money away. When his health seemed to get better the brochure returned.

But (as you might have already guessed) he never did make it on that trip. A few weeks ago, when my son (who never knew his grandfather) began asking me questions like, “what kind of animals live in Alaska?” and “Is it cold there?” I smiled.  I have a feeling that a part of my Dad will get to the great white north one day.

Everyone’s life is full of “what if’s.” I’m not suggesting you clean out your life-savings and go on some kind of wild spree. Odds are you and I will be around for a long time. I’m simply saying you never know what’s around the corner – Sometimes you’ve just got to go for it.

Around the office some people (okay lots of people) have been talking about the cultural phenomenon that is Twilight. When one of my coworkers said, “my wife doesn’t read but she reads those books,” a little part of my English major soul died.Despite my own literary opinions, the brooding monsters can teach us something important about travel.

Fans (young, old, or totally insane) are a part of something that goes beyond a book or feature film. They flock to each other, waiting in line for hours, to share their passion. Travel can offer a similar experience.

A journey is more fulfilling when you share it. Time and again we hear stories about people from different parts of the country and with vastly different backgrounds who sparked lasting friendships on Collette Vacations tours.

Maybe, it’s because deep down those traveling companions are alike – active, engaged and interested in exploring the world. They enjoy the benefits of travel and the inherent value that entails.  You don’t have to travel around the world to make new friends but it sure makes for a great story, one that doesn’t involve teenagers, vampires or werewolves.

Tipping is the custom people love to hate. Beyond the tipping basics — at least 15 percent of a restaurant tab for decent wait service — who gets tipped and for how much can be confusing, even overwhelming. Here are some guidelines.”Off-season” is different all over Earth. It often depends on factors such as weather (ex. rainy season) and holidays (ex. Thanksgiving). Read the rest of this entry »