![\"crocodileclips\"](\"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/crocodileclips.jpg\")
<\/a> But if you have a business to keep running, it becomes important to find ways to stay connected that: a) work; and b) don\u2019t bankrupt the business. It\u2019s always been technically challenging. When my husband travelled on business in the late 80\u2019s, an essential part of his travel kit was a set of crocodile clips. You had to heave the bed away from the wall in your hotel room, find the phone socket and dismantle it, and then attach the crocodile clips, before you could download your email.<\/p>\nWhen I first started my bijou software business in the late 90\u2019s, I only needed to be able to read and send email to keep the business ticking over. If an order came in, I could send an acknowledgement. I could send the software itself on floppy disk when I got home. Once I switched to encrypted keys to unlock the full version of the software, it was even easier – I travelled with a list of keys, and simply emailed one to the customer as needed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m an author with books published, I find myself back in the situation of needing to stay connected to keep the business ticking over. There\u2019s less to do, apart from obsessively checking sales numbers and rankings, but there are times when I absolutely have to respond to emails or pay an invoice or log in to my author account at Amazon to make changes. And I wanted to be able to carry on writing, even when away from home. Smart phones are wonderful, but they\u2019re still phones, and typing more than a text message on them is a pain. And lugging a full-sized laptop everywhere is a hassle when travelling. So, something bigger was needed, and preferably with a decent keyboard.<\/p>\n<\/a>He had an early Toshiba laptop, too, which was such a new idea that he once startled a New Zealand government department merely by picking it up and walking across the room with it (presumably they\u2019re more technologically savvy these days).<\/p>\n<\/a>Things had moved on from crocodile clips by then. In 1999, I had a Jornada, a pocket PC, which had cut-down versions of office software as well as dial-up capability for email. Mind you, it still needed a physical phone socket, and (to my surprise) not all hotels supply phones in the bedroom. I once downloaded my email in the kitchen, while the chefs good-humouredly prepared dinner around me.<\/p>\n<\/a>By 2001, I had a new gadget – a Nokia Communicator. This was a smartphone before the term had even been invented. Like the Jornada, it had cut-down versions of all the basic office software, and – miracle of miracles! – it fetched and sent email without needing to plug into a socket. It needed a mobile signal, but it made me independent of the physical phone system. Oh, the pleasure of leaving dial-up behind! I had two different models of this, and although it\u2019s long gone now (models were produced until 2007), it saw me through to the closing down of my little business.<\/p>\n<\/a>My first thought was a tablet. In 2012 I bought an Asus Slider, which can be used as a (rather thick) tablet, or, by sliding the screen upwards to reveal a keyboad, acts like a mini-laptop. This worked really well for basic email, internet browsing and so forth, as long as there\u2019s wifi available, and I could type on it, too, so I could do some writing. As an Android device, it offered a mean set of apps, too. But there was one big problem: it couldn\u2019t run Scrivener, my writing software of choice. That meant that my travel plans involved copying parts of the work in progress to a Word document, exporting it to the Asus, and then importing it back with changes later. And restoring all the curly quotes, which mysteriously disappeared. Very tedious.<\/p>\n