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Mobile Office Mistakes
Power Trip · November 17, 2003

I recently found myself in Europe without a working cell phone or laptop computer.

A nervous client back in the States needed information from me urgently. To make matters worse it was a Sunday, so there was little chance of finding a post office or a hotel with a business center. In other words, I was in deep trouble.

How did someone like me — a so-called mobile computing expert — get so hopelessly disconnected? The short answer is that my portable phone couldn't talk to the European cellular network, and I didn't have the right adapter for my PC. But in fact I had committed at least two of the five cardinal mobile-office sins — Nos. 2 and 3, to be exact.

No one knows for certain how much our tech transgressions cost us (although there are surveys that often pinpoint the price of each individual mistake, as I'll explain in a moment). But we do know from our own experiences as frequent travelers that having something go wrong with our mobile offices is often more than a disturbance. It can also cost us business.

So what are biggest mobile-office mistakes? Here are my five nominations.

Not protecting your equipment. Did you remember to install the latest antivirus software? Being on the road isn't just hazardous to your health, it can also put your mobile office at risk. The average virus infection costs a company $81,000, according to a recent survey by ICSA Labs. There's no telling what you're going to bring back to the office with you.

"There are places out there that are virus cesspools," warns Hop Holmberg, a hospital director in Muscat, Oman, a city and nation in the Middle East. "I've gotten the bug far and wide — in the Philippines, the Ukraine and Moldova, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Rwanda." He adds that when he doesn't take the right precautions by making sure his antivirus software is up-to-date, "it's a miserable trip."

Not taking the right equipment. Before I left for Europe, I took every precaution to make sure my American cell phone would work properly. Or so I thought. I consulted my mobile phone provider's Web site, and even called its 800-number to double-check. After all, a recent survey by British Telecom found that slightly less than a quarter of small-business owners believe they lose business as a result of missed calls.

Unfortunately, the customer-service representative (and I use that term loosely) misinformed me about my phone. It didn't work. As a result, I had to rely on land lines while I was on my trip, which proved to be inconvenient. The same principle applies to other mobile-office equipment. Are you taking a laptop with an outdated operating system in the hopes of connecting to a newer corporate network? Do you have one of those keychain memory devices you're hoping to connect to a vintage PC? You might want to think again.

Not carrying the right adapters. If you travel internationally, you can be virtually sure of one thing: Your plugs won't fit the sockets. That's what happened to me. Even though my laptop could handle a 220-volt plug, I lacked the adapter needed to make the right connection. Maybe it's just as well. When I finally found the right adapter, I plugged my electric razor into the wall and blew it out. Frequent travelers like Scott Hancock, a consultant who lives in Tokyo, know all about adapters. "I go shopping for the right adapter before I go on a trip," he says. Among his favorite sites for finding the right plugs are TeleAdapt.com and iGo.com. Sometimes you can also find the right adapter in the country you're visiting. But I wouldn't count on it.

Not packing the right peripherals or power supplies. So you remembered your phone and PC. Good for you. But did you also bring the devices necessary to power them?

In a recent survey by chip manufacturer Intel, more than half of all laptop users complained that their computers didn't offer enough battery life. But do those same users bring along an extra battery when they travel? Probably not, because batteries are heavy. Based on the number of complaints I get from business travelers, I'd even go as far as to say the extra battery is the one item that gets left back at the office most often. What else? In this day and age of detachable disk drives and CD burners, I've also heard of travelers taking off without adequate storage space, hardware needed to make their presentations, cables, and even mission-critical add-ons such as keyboards for their personal digital assistants.

Not backing up your data often enough. Take it from someone who has learned this the hard way: Back up your data, please. According to the U.S. National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, D.C., 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year.

I recently suffered a catastrophic PC meltdown, and were it not for the fact that at least some of my data had been backed up, I probably wouldn't be here now. How do you back up your data from the road? You can burn the data to a CD or, if you have a high-speed connection, can back up to your server. The best solutions I've found are the ones that require no thinking on your part. They're completely automatic.

I won't keep you in suspense about how my own tech nightmare ended. I managed to persuade a shopkeeper to let me use his PC, and was able to answer my customer's question via e-mail. On Monday morning I bought an adapter for my PC and a phone card that allowed me to make cheap calls back to the States. Problem solved.

But I know I could have prevented all of this in the first place, if I'd only taken my own advice.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.

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