All digital marketing professionals, myself included, travel with a full backpack of gear that includes laptop, tablet, smartphone, travel mouse (touchpads suck) and a whole bunch of different extension cords and power adapters.
However, there is one piece of gear that I’ve yet to see anyone sport other than myself…a portable Wifi Extender.
Roughly 50% of the time when I fire up my laptop, I get less than 5 bars of signal. I already know that I’m going to get far less of a pipe when I’m not in my home office and that my laptop is going to have far less pickup than my supercharged desktop. However, less than 5 bars make work other than basic web use to be almost intolerable.
Wifi-extenders easily transform a 3 or 4 bar signal into a 5 bar signal…and this corresponding increase in work productivity (and reduction in frustration) is massive. I’ve even benefitted from using them in office situations. People also use them to piggy back off of their neighbors open networks.
There a bunch of models out there…my Alfa Extender is probably 5 years old and it’s the one part of my digital setup that I’ve never had to update.
Do yourself a favor and add one of these to your travel pack…you’ll be glad you did.
