Going Mobile on the Orient Express

Now this is a press junket. It seems Dell took some bloggers and media folk on a ride on the Orient Express to show off some of the new mobile computers they are now crowing about.

Back in the day before I was into mobile tech (and before such options really existed the way they do today) I did some theatre work in Omsk and Yekaterinburg, Russia, and would take the train from Moscow to both destinations and back. Those trips were at least a day and a half if not two days of riding the rails. They were always a relaxing, but long way into a job and a great way to decompress afterwards before heading home. But they could have certainly been more productive if the technology had existed back then to connect up.

Given air travel costs and gasoline costs, I’m wondering if more folks will start taking trains for long trips. I’m also wondering if train lines are thinking about adding broadband access of some kind, or just letting their customers rely on pulling signals out of the air. I know many commuters in urban areas commute by train as well.

Anybody have any info on this? Could be interesting.

Some other links about the trip from Geek Chic and Going Underground’s Blog.