USA Today: Business Travelers Can’t Pack Light When It Comes To Gadgets

Interesting article from USA Today I noticed in this morning’s paper. According to a survey by In-Stat. They were surprised to find that business travelers double their pleasure (or load) with multiple gadgets. In the survey 15% carry mutliple cell phones, but get this, 20% carry multiple laptops. The reasons for the duplication? Multipurpose devices are too unreliable and hard to use, battery life, not enough storage, desires for better keyboards, and syncing and connectivity issues.

I’m noticing at the audition conference I’m attending I noticed a few folks (10 to be exact) have multiple phones and in a quick unscientific survey on our most recent break, the folks who I talked to said they use one for email (BlackBerries seem to be the favorite) and one for phone calls. Those with SmartPhones don’t use, and were largely unaware, of the majority of the features on the phone, agreeing somewhat with the In-Stat survey that they were just too complicated for them to take the time to learn.

I asked one gentleman, who is a good friend and decidedly not a geek, if he would prefer to have one device that could do it all and his response was “only if it was brain dead simple to use and the battery lasted forever.”

Interesting.