How to Prep Your Tech for Travel: The Ultimate Guide

Getting ready to go on holiday sometimes seems to take longer than the trip itself. Working out what you’re going to wear, making sure you’ve got enough toiletries for every eventuality and triple checking you’ve got your passport are all familiar to most of us.

However, one thing that many of us neglect is how to get our technology ready for a vacation.

4 Ways to Prep your Tech for Travel

There’ll be items we bring with us, always a phone, often a camera and occasionally a laptop. There’ll be items we leave at home too, the television, the games console, the desktop PC. Each of them needs readying for your holiday in different ways and we’ve compiled them here to take some of the stress out of your trip.

1. Switch It All Off

The gadgets you’re leaving at home are often totally forgotten about for the week and that’s ok, as long as you’ve remembered to turn them off! Leaving your television, desktop computer, or games console on for the duration of your trip will not only cost you money on electricity, but it could also even shorten its lifespan.

This doesn’t just mean you just need to shut things down either, that should hopefully go without saying. It means you should turn them off at the plug. Not only will this save on your bills and keep your tech alive for longer, but it can also keep your home safe too.

If an electrical fault were to happen, a plugged-in gadget is far more likely to start a fire than one that is switched off at the wall, or better still completely unplugged. Nobody wants to have to think about the worst happening, especially not on holiday, so take a second before you leave to do a plug audit.

2. Gadgets You Should Get

There are some items of tech that we use in our day-to-day lives that go out of the window when holiday time rolls around, alarm clocks are usually number one! Conversely, there are some bits of tech that we don’t use from one end of the year to the next, but that comes in really handy whenever it’s time to go on vacation.

For some of us, it’s a dedicated travel laptop with a great battery life that weighs nothing, but for most of us it’s a fancy camera, be it digital, or manual, SLR or not, we enjoy having a great holiday snaps to look back on.

Of course, some of us don’t have a fancy camera and some of us feel a bit worried about taking expensive equipment abroad, so if you’re looking for that professional finish, but are really only going to be taking photographs on your phone, then you might feel a little stuck.

Thankfully there are now clip-on lens alterers that will fit the standard camera on just about any modern smartphone. These lenses can give you a wide-angle, fisheye, or telescopic effect on your photographs, helping to lend a more professional edge to your Instagram snaps.

3. Learn About the Law

Learning about the different customs when you visit a new country is one of the most interesting parts of traveling. Being surrounded by a culture that is totally different from yours is really exciting, trying new food, speaking a new language and noticing different ways of life.

However, sometimes it’s possible to get caught out by customs or laws that don’t exist in your home country, that do abroad. Thankfully there are few laws across the world that could catch out a technology enthusiast, but one that gamers should be aware of is the different gaming laws in each country.

AsiaBet is a specialist site that clearly explains the legalities of casino games and sports betting across the Asian continent. Their page on online gambling in Japan details the country’s laws clearly and also offers advice on sites that you can use safely and securely. If you particularly enjoy online gaming then it’s worth reading up on the country you’re traveling to, to check that it’s legal and to see if you can get your hands on any offers.

4. Charge Them Up

Everybody knows to remember their charger when they go on holiday, we’d all be lost without our smartphones after all. Bringing a charger, and the correct travel adapter is obviously essential, but bringing a power pack should be the next most important thing on your list.

During our everyday lives, we have a reliable routine and our gadgets tend to remain fairly charged, as we know when it’s necessary to top them up. On holiday we’re all over the place exploring and often this means our tech can get low on battery, having a power pack can help.

If you want to go one better, then finding yourself a 12-volt charger that can be used in the car will ensure that you really can be powered on at all times.