Travel Tip: Leave the Laptop at Home

Samsung

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Photo by: Samsung

A few weeks ago, I hopped over to the Out Islands to cover the grand reopening of the Bimini Big Game Club. Just a quick two-day assignment – and only a 20-minute flight each way – I decided this would be the perfect chance to try something pretty radical for a travel editor: ditching my usual heavy work-station at home.

Generally, packing for a trip means tossing my MacBook, power cord and a myriad of techie accessories into my carry-on – then hauling it all out for inspection at every security check point from here to there and back again. But this time, I was armed with a Samsung S1 Mini portable hard drive – pre-loaded with all of the documents, schedules and photos I need to update caribbeantravelmag.com each day – and by the first TSA line, my little experiment in minimalist business travel had already paid off. The compact 250 GB drive (at 88 grams, it’s smaller and lighter than my iPhone) fit easily into my bag each day, and whenever I needed to access my files to post a quick blog, I just stopped by the hotel business center, plugged in the drive via USB, and voila! I had 250 gigs of Caribbean travel content right in front of me.

The S1 Mini is the smallest hard drive of its capacity available on the market today, and if you’re like me and have a tendency to, um…misplace tiny things, then that’s probably a scary thought. But Samsung already thought of that, too: the drives have not one but two built-in safety features to protect your data – both a password protection program called SafetyKey and a data encryption program called SecretZone – so even if your drive makes it into the wrong hands, all of your secrets are still safe.

The S1 Mini drive comes in your choice of black, white, red, chocolate, pink or blue (after all, what’s the point if you can’t coordinate your hard drive with your carry-on?) – and best of all, they start at just $69.99. samsung.com

Tags: caribbean shopping