Hey...I thought the world was getting in sync?

In a couple of weeks I'll be on a 12 hour flight to Tokyo. My Powerbook gets less than three hours on a charge (my work-issued Thinkpad four and a half) so I checked with Northwest Airlines on seat power. None. Wifi? None. Guess I'd better buy another battery. My iPod also won't last very long so I may be forced to read my book without tunes.

Then I checked with my two mobile telephony providers (TMobile for personal and Cingular for work) to see if either Blackberry would have service. Voice? None for either since Japan is on an incompatible, 3G system. Email? Yes...but limited.

My Nikon D70 will work fine and batteries, Compact Flash cards and more will be generally available. Same for miniDV and my Sony camcorder batteries should I need any for these two devices. Discovered today, though, that Wifi in our hotel will be US$25 per day to connect to the 'net. So I poked around and TMobile hotspots in Starbucks there have a US$0.12 per minute surcharge. What?

So the world isn't in sync on standards and travel with all these tech devices isn't easy and seamless yet. But when my Dad and I took our trip to Germany in 1997 to see where my ancestors came from (his first international trip), he was absolutely amazed that we would be in Germany in 8 hours...and it took them one month to travel from Germany to Minnesota. On that trip the 'net was new and I was standing in phone booths with an acoustic coupler modem most nights since I was building a web site on the fly.

Oh poor Steve. No non-stop power for his laptop. A whole 12 hours to Tokyo. Semi-ubiquitous and fairly affordable connection to a worldwide network for pennies. I'll stop my whining now.