Electronics

As I said in the packing post, clothing is only half of our luggage. Rest of the space goes to meds, toiletries, accessories, but mostly to electronics. This is Pedja’s department and he is to be blamed for our overflowing inventory of electronics. Here is what we ended up carrying:
– 3 laptops
– 3 cameras – Sony RX100, Nikon DSLR and GoPro (all older versions)
– 2 eReaders- Kindles Paperwhite (1 waterproof and 1 w/free 3g)
– 2 tablets – iPad and Kindle Fire (kids edition)
– 2 boogie boards (8×11 and 7×10)
– 3 phones – 2 iPhones 6s & 1 Google Pixel XL phone (w/ Google Fi coverage). Extras – additional data card + 2 old phones as backups.
– 3 battery packs (Anker)
– 1 Small portable travel router
– 3 USB power chargers – 4 ports
– Headphones – 1 headphones for Nina and dozen earbuds
– Various cords and plug adapters

Laptops – Pedja, Petra and I are carrying laptops. That’s probably an overkill. We first thought we would only have 1 laptop, but no one wanted to give up their own. I like using it for writing anything longer than 2 sentences. I type fast and I’m most comfortable using my own device. My laptop is on its last legs, my screen is damaged, but it will serve me well enough for working with Maksim on his schoolwork and doing my own journaling. That was my rationale for not leaving my laptop behind.
During the next 18 months, Petra will take a few online classes to keep up with her HCC cohort. She also insisted that she is the most comfortable using her own device and wanted to be able to do her schoolwork at the same time as Maksim. Hence, she brought her laptop so she wouldn’t have to share mine with Maksim. She also has no tablet and she uses her laptop as one.
Pedja is our IT Director and he is in charge of all of our electronics. He is working remotely for the first month in Buenos Aires, hence, he needed his own laptop.
That’s how we ended up with bringing 3 laptops, everyone in charge of their own and no complaints from any of us.

Cameras – Pedja is a lot more trigger happy when we travel. I’m just not in the mood to take lots of photos right now. I got a small old Sony RX100 (first generation) for kids to use and Pedja insisted we take the DSLR and GoPro. Only 2 weeks into our trip and I think he’ll give up on our DSLR and send it back home soon. Pedja loves this small Sony camera (even though it’s a pretty old one) and I could see him getting a new version of it soon. I’m just using my (and occasionally his) phone for pics and it’s good enough for me. GoPro, I have no clue why we have it. I’m sure it can be useful but I am yet to download anything off of it and we’ve had it for the past 2-3yrs. I mentioned that Pedja is the one that takes most photos right now but he is not as diligent as I have been over the years about cleaning his collection or sorting it the way I usually do when I take photos. This presents a bit of an issue as he keeps taking hundreds of photos expecting me to later manage them. This dynamic has not produced successful results (we don’t really have a great collection of photos so far) but time will tell if this will change over the next few months .

Tablets – Nina is attached to his iPad and Maki is using his Kindle Fire only when traveling (on plane/train rides). Maki uusually has no electronics these days and starting this rule a month before we left home has served us well.

eReaders – when traveling fairly light, reading ebooks needs no further explanation. Kindle Paperwhites are fantastic, light, small, hold battery forever, can download books anywhere, etc. Maksim, Petra and I share these two Kindles.

Boogie Boards – Kids use them as scratch paper when doing math, I use them for To Do lists, etc. They are easy to carry and they have proven to be useful.

Phones and phone/data coverage– Petra, Pedja and I have unlocked phones with Google Fi coverage. None of us care much about having the latest and greatest. Petra and I both have old iPhones and Petra is ok with hers while mine is not doing as well (battery not holding charge even though it’s a new one). I’m now thinking that I should have gotten a new phone before we left but it always seems like such a huge waste of money. Phones are expensive and I just couldn’t justify getting a new phone when mine was doing just fine. If my battery was doing better (as it should’ve since it was replaced right before we left), I would probably be fine. However, since I don’t use any other camera right now, I would have been better off with a newer phone. Pedja’s phone is fantastic and it takes fabulous photos.
Google Fi is fabulous. We pay for 12 gigs of data between the three of us and then get up to 15 gigs per line for free, free texting, 20 cents/minute calls. We’ve had a fantastic coverage here in Argentina. We heard that Google FI coverage in SE Asia might not be as good and if that proves to be true, we’ll get local SIM cards. We use WhatsApp, Viber and Skype for calls so that’s included in data. We also got to keep our US phone numbers which is pretty great and together with a $2.99/month subscription from Skype, we have unlimited calls to all US phones. I love this set up since it’s super handy to have our regular phone numbers and be able to call home and all US institutions without having additional charges. I’m grateful that Pedja is a geek that researched all of our options and we ended up with Google Fi. In addition to our 3 phones, Pedja also brought with usvtwo of our old phones in case one of ours craps out or gets lost or stolen. He also added a free data card from Google Fi as a back up.

Battery packs – Anker chargers are fantastic, they are so darn useful and we all use them. I love the small one (10,000mAh) since it fits well in my little purse but the bigger ones (20,100mAh) have been great for travel too. We’ve used Anker chargers for travel or camping for several years now and we knew that they would be used a lot and would be useful.

Portable Travel Router – Since my hubby is a geek, he brought his own router so that he can set up his own network, amplify signal, etc. He has already used it in our second apartment in Buenos Aires. He loves it, we love it, it’s useful. He did great deciding to bring it with us.

USB power chargers – Pedja got us a couple of Bestek chargers and we love them (we’ve had them for the past couple of yrs). They are compact enough, have 4 USB slots and come with extra plug adaptors. We started off with 2 and decided to get one more (Danijela and Jared brought it to us).

Headphones – pickier (or more sophisticated) folks might need better headphones. We only have one set of ok headphones for Nina (but they are only used when traveling, mostly by Maksim). The rest of us use one of dozen (cheap) earbuds.

Various cords and plugs – I got 6 iPhone charging cords to make sure I have plenty of back up. Pedja brought an assortment of adapters and other various cords.

In conclusion, we probably have too many electronic devices but for now, we are ok with what we have (minus DSLR that will go home with Danijela and Jared). Most seasoned travelers take a lot less than we did. We might change our tune along the way. For now, I’m fine with having all of this stuff as long as Pedja takes care of it all, completely 😉 After all, he is our IT Director.