Review: Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers

Anil Polat is the kind of guy we like around here at Too Many Adapters.  He’s a former information security consultant turned world traveller, tech enthusiast and a hell of a nice guy to boot.  When we saw that he had released an updated version of his Ultimate Tech Guide for Travellers ebook, we just knew that we had to get our hands on a review copy.

First impressions

The guide is impressively detailed and thorough at nearly 160 pages.  Plenty of images, screenshots and illustrations break the content up nicely, illustrating particular instructions or concepts and making it easier to digest the technical subject matter.

Anil has obviously spent plenty of time in his life explaining complex subjects to non-experts.  The writing is breezy and fun, aimed at the lay person and breaking down even challenging topics like encryption and proxy servers into understandable sections.

What’s in it?

The book is broken up into 11 chapters that follow a fairly logical structure.  While there is a bit of jumping around, similar concepts are largely grouped together and refer to each other throughout the text.  Dozens of links are spread throughout, from numerous free software downloads, news reports and technical articles and a bunch of other stuff, and they do well in providing additional info for those that want it without turning the guide into War and Peace.

Some of the sections that particularly stood out to me included:

• a large section on how to choose the right laptop or tablet for you (hint: don’t ask the kid at the computer store)
• extending your battery life no matter what device you’re using
• setting up automated backups (in multiple places)
• how to take better photos, and then improve them with free software
• learning to speak ‘tourist’
• setting up encryption, proxy servers and other boring-but-necessary security stuff
• buying the right travel insurance
• some expert ‘hacker’ tips at the end, including how to watch your favourite shows while overseas or find out the wifi password for that guesthouse over the road

Even those are really just the tip of the iceberg – there is a lot of information in this guide, and even we found a few useful pieces of software and handy tips that were new to us – Hugin for easily creating panoramic photos, for example, or Driveimage XML for creating a complete image of your laptop hard drive.

Is it worth it?

The guide costs $27, which is towards the higher end of ebook prices.  Is it worth the money?

In our opinion, it is.  There is a wealth of information in the guide, clearly laid out and explained in a way that makes it easily understandable for even those who don’t have a strong tech background.  The free software options that are used save many hundreds of dollars over their commercial counterparts, while picking the right computing device could save hundreds more.

Even more than that, though, is that fact that Anil offers six months worth of email support to everyone that buys the book on any topic contained within it.  Having that kind of one-to-one support when you need it is worth a small fortune by itself … and definitely a lot more than twenty seven bucks!

In short, if you’re about to hit the road and want loads of great tech advice – and free support – from an expert, this is the best guide we’ve seen so far.

If you’d like to learn more about and buy a copy of the Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers, you can do so here.

Dave Dean

One of the editors of Too Many Adapters, Dave has been a traveller for nearly 15 years and a geek for even longer.

When he is not playing with the latest tech toy or working out how to keep his phone charged for just a few more minutes, he can probably be found sitting in a broken down bus in some obscure corner of the planet.