I travel a lot for business. How much is a lot? Last year, I flew more than 70,000 miles and attended technical and business conferences in Hong Kong, Seoul, Seattle, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, New York City, and Atlanta. Along the way, I earned Diamond status on Delta, Platinum on Marriott Envoy, and Diamond on Hilton. I’ll travel at least that much this coming year.
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When you do this kind of business travel, you soon realize that besides watching your airline and hotel points carefully, you need to carry exactly what you need in your laptop bag — and not one thing more.
Here’s what’s in my kit and alternatives, depending on exactly what I’ll be doing on any given trip.
Laptop bag
Heritage Travelware 16-inch Laptop Portfolio
Let’s start with the bag itself. Personally, I use a customized leather laptop bag I picked up in Carmel-by-the-Sea years ago. If I had to replace it today, I’d probably get an $80 Heritage Travelware 16-inch Laptop Portfolio.
I’ve heard good things about the Heritage brand from other road warriors, and at $79.99, it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. It’s also roomy and has sufficient pockets to handle a lot of gear.
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That said, when it comes to laptop bags, everyone is different. Some people even prefer laptop backpacks. If you prefer backpacks, I’d give the $159 Timbuk2 Authority Laptop Backpack Deluxe a try. Ideally, go to a luggage store and try out several to see which will work best for you. Laptop bags are a personal choice.
Laptops
Acer Chromebook Enterprise Spin 514 Convertible
I prefer high-powered, large-screen Chromebooks. Why would Mr. Desktop Linux prefer a Chromebook? Because all Chromebooks also run Linux. They’re also light, and, this is the real winner, when — not if, when — something happens to your laptop, all you have to do is buy another Chromebook, and you’re back in business as soon as you connect back to the internet.
Over the years, I’ve had laptops stolen, dropped and broken, fried by a surge, and just die for no discernible reason. When that used to happen to me, it was a major disaster. Ever try to restore a Windows or Linux laptop when you’re a thousand miles from home? It’s not easy. With a Chromebook, it takes me no more than half an hour, and I’m back in business.
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I’m currently using an Acer Chromebook Enterprise Spin 514 Convertible Laptop. This Chromebook’s heart is the AMD Ryzen 5 3500C processor, paired with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 128GB of SSD storage. That’s not enough resources for a Windows 10 or 11 machine. For a Chromebook running ChromeOS and Debian Linux 12 Bookworm, it’s more than enough to deliver impressive performance. Not bad at all for only $419.
The 14-inch Full HD IPS touchscreen display offers crisp visuals and responsive touch input. I like its 16:9 aspect, which has good color reproduction and brightness. Although I rarely use it as a tablet, its 2-in-1 design is handy when I want to use it that way.
Unlike way too many laptops these days, this Chromebook has a good selection of ports, including USB-C, USB-A, and an HDMI port. With Wi-Fi 5, I always get reliable wireless connections. I wish, though, that it supported Wi-Fi 7. Battery life is solid. Acer claims you can get up to 10 hours of use, but as it’s gotten older, it’s down to about 7 hours these days. That said, I run that battery a lot — 70,000 miles in the air will do that.
Sometimes, though, I need a full-powered Linux system. For those trips, I take my Ubuntu-Linux-powered Dell XPS 13. This laptop is the latest of a long series of Dell XPS 13 laptops designed for Linux developers by Linux developers.
The latest Linux-powered Dell XPS 13 boasts an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU at its heart with Intel Arc Graphics. The built-in graphics show to their advantage on a 13.4-inch Non-Touch FHD+ (1920×1200). Its standout feature is its stunning display with incredibly narrow bezels, offering a nearly borderless viewing experience. The model I’m using comes with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. On it, I’m running Ubuntu Linux 24.04.
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As all its family does, it has a sleek and compact design. It comes with a machined aluminum chassis with carbon fiber and woven glass fiber elements. Its ultralight weight of just 2.8 pounds makes it highly portable.
Battery performance on the XPS 13 is solid, with Dell claiming up to 19 hours of useful life. In my experience, though, I typically see around 8-10 hours, depending on the workload and display brightness.
It also comes with a pair of USB-C ports. Unfortunately, since the laptop is also powered via a USB-C port, you only have one available most of the time. For networking, it uses an Intel Killer Wi-Fi 7 chipset.
This model costs $1,499.99. It’s not cheap, but it’s hard to beat if you want a Linux laptop built from the ground up.
Docking station
StarTech USB-C Docking Station
These days, laptops never have enough ports. Now, for most people, that’s not a big deal. But if you’re like me and you’ve got a lot of peripherals to hook up, such as one different projector after another, you need ports. In particular, you need all the graphic ports — HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4, and USB-C video — you can get. That’s where the $179 StarTech USB-C Docking Station comes in.
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With all those video outputs, it can support triple 4K 30Hz displays or a single 5K 60Hz monitor. With the right cables, I’ll never have to worry about an incompatible monitor again — unless I find someone still using VGA, and that’s why I carry HDMI adapters.
It also includes 7 USB ports and more:
- A pair of USB-A 10Gbps
- 1x USB-A 10Gbps with BC 1.2 charging
- 1x USB-C 10Gbps
- 2 USB-A 480Mbps
- 1x USB-C shared 10Gbps & DP Alt Mode video
- 60W Power Delivery
- Gigabit Ethernet
- A 3.5mm headset/audio port
If you need a lot of different ports on the road, the StarTech is worth every penny.
Smartphone
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
I use two different smartphones. Why? Because I spend at least a month every year traveling internationally. In the States, I use a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra cell phone with all the trimmings. The phone, at $1,049, puts a hurt on my wallet. On the other hand, it’s also, as far as I’m concerned, the best high-end smartphone out there today. I’m not the only one who sees it that way. The ZDNET crew agrees that the latest top-of-the-line Samsung is a great phone.
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On my Galaxy, I use Verizon. I use that service because it works best in my home in Asheville, North Carolina, and it works well throughout most of the major US cities I travel to. But when I travel internationally, Verizon costs me $12 a day. Ouch!
So, when I leave the US, I switch to my Google Pixel Pro 9. This is also an excellent high-end smartphone with an $852.49 price tag. What I really like about it is that I can use Google Fi’s Unlimited Plus International Plan with it. With this plan, I pay $65 a month, and I don’t have to pay an extra dime for international voice, data, or texting. Better still, I can pause the plan when I’m not traveling out of the country, so I only pay for Google Fi when I need it. Win!
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In both cases, what I look for in a smartphone is a great camera for when I take photos at an event, excellent Wi-Fi capabilities, and storage. The application I use the most on any phone is Otter.ai. This is the best voice transcription program out there. I use it for hours every trip to transcribe interviews and speeches. I subscribe to the Otter.ai Pro plan. This gives me 1,200 minutes of transcription per month for an annual cost of $100 a year.
For journalists, it’s become essential software. If you also find yourself needing to take comprehensive notes for your work, I highly recommend it.
Powerbank
Anker Nano Power Bank 10,000mAh
It doesn’t matter how great your electronics are if you can’t power them. So, I always take a power bank with me when I travel. I’ve used several models over the years. My current favorite is the $39.99 Anker Nano Power Bank 10,000mAh Portable Charger.
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What I like about it is that it has both USB-C and USB-A ports. I still carry some older tech gear with me, and that USB-A port has come in handy to keep that stuff powered up. In addition, it has a built-in USB-C cable, which is great when I can’t get my hands on a spare USB-C cable.
Earphones
Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones
When you fly as much as I do, you learn that nothing makes a long flight as bearable as over-the-ear, noise-canceling headphones. Whether it’s a noisy kid in the row behind you or just the unending hum of the jet engines, a good pair of headphones is a must.
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I’m currently using the $328 Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. For me, the key features are excellent noise cancellation and great battery life. This model does a top-notch job of delivering both. It also handles phone calls and the like well with its Bluetooth connection. Unlike many Bluetooth headsets, it works well with and stays connected to my other Bluetooth hardware.
Road Wi-Fi router
GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 Slate AX
Every hotel has Wi-Fi, but many make setting up a connection a pain. My answer is to use a travel router. I then hook that device up to the hotel Wi-Fi and use it to connect my laptop, phones, and tablets to the Wi-Fi. This way, I only have to hook up the router, and everything else automatically uses it for its network connection.
I had been using a TP-Link TL-WR902AC, but TP-Link devices are no longer trustworthy. So, I’ve recently replaced it with a GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 Slate AX travel router.
Frankly, it’s a superior router anyway. It has a pair of LAN Gbps ports and one Gbps gigabit WAN port. For Wi-Fi, it supports Wi-Fi 6. Off my home, a 2Gbps Internet connection delivers an honest gigabit of traffic, which is as good as that protocol can deliver in the real world.
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Under the hood, the Slate router runs the OpenWRT-embedded Linux distro. Despite that, it’s much easier to set up than its TP-Link predecessor. If you want to get fancy with it, though, and, say, set up your own portable file server, you can do that.
Last, but never least, it also comes with Virtual Private Networking (VPN) baked in to maximize your privacy. All in all, this $113 travel router is well worth the money.
Power adapters
Olcorife Power Strip
If you travel internationally a lot, you’ll soon get a collection of power adapters. My bag is full of them.
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One of the best universal ones is the $16.99 Olcorife Power Strip with EU/UK/US Plug Adapters. It’s a little bulky, but I’ll happily put up with that since I can use it in the UK, most of Europe, and Japan. It also has six power outlets, two USB-A ports, and a USB-C port.
Cables
BAGSMART Electronics Organizer
There is no such thing as enough cables when we are thousands of miles away from home. I always carry half a dozen USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, and some oddball cables. Hey, you never know when you’ll need a VGA cable!
To carry them all, I stuff them in several different bags. If I were more organized, I’d get a BAGSMART Electronics Organizer Small Cable Organizer Bag for $19.99. In fact, now that I think of it, I’ll do just that.
Tablets
iPad Mini 6th-gen
I don’t use tablets for work, but travel can’t be all work and no play. For that reason, I always take a $449 iPad Mini 6th generation and an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite with me. I use the Mini for videos and noodling around on the web, while I use the Kindle for — you guessed it — reading e-books.
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I bought a minimal iPad for $449 because it’s just for fun, and I like its size. If I wanted an iPad for work, I’d buy a $559 iPad Air 11-inch (M2). My Kindle, on the other hand, is the top-of-the-line Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (32 GB) for $199. Why? Because I read a lot, and I love a battery that can last for days and days.
Smart TV device
4K Chromecast with Google TV
I’ve been using Chromecasts to watch my favorite streaming channels in hotels since Google first released the devices more than a decade ago. Today, many hotel TVs come with an easy streaming service setup, but I still carry a Chromecast with Google TV (4K).
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Why? Well, hotel chains are infamous for poor security. They’ve improved, but I’d still rather not trust them with my streaming service IDs and passwords, thank you very much. In addition, the hotel TVs only have a handful of streaming channels. If I want to watch, say, the hilarious dark comedy Laid on Peacock while on the road with a Chromecast, I can.
Everyone’s travel needs are different, but this is what has worked for me with decades of travel experience. I hope it’s given you some ideas on how to make your work trips more productive and pleasant.