A few months ago I bought a laptop, my first one since 1995. I spent an extra couple hundred bucks to make sure it was light but powerful enough that I wouldn't have to replace it for at least two years. I found the right balance of hard drive space, speed, size, and affordability. The plan was to be free to get out of the house and write anywhere. I would go sit in coffeehouses and maybe even bars.
If I moved out of San Francisco, I would be able to pack lightly and take it with me. Summer in Prague? Okay, let me just grab my laptop. Winter in Tijuana? That’s sounds wonderful, let me just grab my laptop and I'll meet you at the airport. There I can do some work while I'm waiting for my flight. I'll just connect to the airport's wifi network and I’m good to go.
Last week I also bought a new cell phone. I wanted one that got better reception in my apartment so that eventually I can get rid of my landline and be totally mobile. That means I’ll never miss an important work-related call, so should an editor phone with, "Camper, I need 1500 words on how great you are, but if you can’t deliver it within in the next two hours forget it," I could take that assignment no matter where I was at the time. I’d just sit down my phone and whip out my laptop. Or, if I’d left my laptop at home, I could compose the whole thing as a text message and send it in. My speed would be impressive.
I bought the expensive phone because it has a good camera and an mp3 player built-in. I own a digital camera already, but since it was made in 2000 or so, it’s bulky and heavy relative to the new ones. I don’t have an mp3 player and I don’t really want one, but there are those times when I’m at the gym running on the treadmill and I want to listen to books on mp3, and they’re also good for shutting out the ignorant chatter of high school kids on the 22 Fillmore.
With this phone, I don’t need to have three pieces of equipment hanging around my neck slowing me down. I can take a picture, narrate the story with the digital mp3 recorder, type in the footnotes, and call the publisher to let them know the story is ready for publication. I can do anything from anywhere with this equipment. I’m ready to leap on a moment’s notice. I am fully mobile, ready, willing, and able. It’s just too bad I'm too lazy and too poor to actually leave the house.