Connected while on vacation – more people do

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

Just wait until you see our new Mobile Workforce Report. People don’t want to get away, when they get away. Now that the final part of summer is upon us, many people are taking to the beaches and mountains to get away from it all. But are they?

NPR recently reported on the trend. Most of us have stories like that. I just returned from a quick (extended) family vacation up in the mountains. The cabins that we all stay in added Wi-Fi access a few years ago. And, I discovered, if you couldn’t get their Wi-Fi, then the Wi-Fi across the street might be reachable. As I was only missing one working day, I wasn’t worried.

But what did I take? My personal laptop, for personal stuff, and some work email checking. My smartphone, which gets my work email. My new iPad, which also gets me work email. (I will talk later about this conundrum of carrying an additional “screen.”).

For vacation?

Then, we found that the “free” Wi-Fi wasn’t working. Even the high-school whiz-kid programmer couldn’t get online. Maybe, I could have asked the proprietor to re-boot the router, like Rick Broida, Computerworld, suggested when at Panera on a slow “free” Wi-Fi connection.

“Stress — technology to me equates to stress,” says a camper, in the NPR article, referenced above. This certainly became the case, when none of us could connect. But you know…after a few quick emails to my boss (for some reason my iPad would connect successfully, albeit intermittently), I put down the technology. And packed in a lot of outdoor fun.

Back at the airport, my iPad quickly got me online, via my iPass account. Sure, that was fast, and I was ready for email, but decided to stay “on vacation.” I put it back in my backpack with the other screens and pulled out a magazine. Technology could wait this time.