I saw this article (it's slop, so skim it if you like, I'm curious about the concept) about traveling without a laptop and I'm not sure if I am ready to make the leap like this, but it sounds kinda nice.
here's how he solves the screen problem:
Use an external monitor — any with HDMI. And that’s practically every one these days. A monitor at a hotel, the TV in an Airbnb, a monitor in a café, at a friend’s place. You carry nothing — a “monitor” is everywhere around you.
Are you thinking about ditching the laptop?
It's starting to become unavoidable unless you want to risk fines, prison or blacklisting from countries if you refuse to unlock your devices.
If you are not a US citizen and refuse to unlock your device when entering the USA you can be denied entry and blacklisted. You lose the ability to get an ESTA or transit / fly via the US, which could be life-changing if you need to travel to the region.
If you transit via HKG airport and you refuse to unlock your device, well research it, it was all over the news.
These are not the only countries where you might be forced to unlock your devices.
I had to travel without my laptop and with a brand new phone without data on it. It was pretty much impossible to survive and the money lost by not having my main machine for weeks was 5 figures USD.
I would always refuse to unlock any device at any border, and I could equally not risk getting blacklisted.
This came at a huge cost. It's depressing.
You can work with some cloud solutions only, not suitable for everything. Especially if your main device has a lot of storage needs (think full-node blockchain stuff) or who knows what, that you can not easily pull from cloud storage within a few hours.
No way am I touching any electronics that aren't mine, let alone connecting to it.
You can do both: not touch strangers electronics and not bring a laptop on travel.
True; I did that for a while when I traveled to events. Just take a burner and done. But that's not really what the article suggests.
Even a TV screen in a hotel?
No. And no, I also don't use their wifi.
What do you recommend as a solution for WiFi when traveling?
Tether a burner with an esim over USB, or a "mifi" box with an ethernet cable; though the latter are harder to secure. Important to mind is to not run your own wifi endpoint (and defo not bluetooth!) if you can help it, because every phone around you scans and reports those back home. Yes, everyone has spyware in their pocket.
About 18 months ago I had this project to have a little dev board (rk3328, later switched to 3588) with a strong usb antenna and have it act as an ethernet->pubwifi router, but captive (the "login" screen) is hell and I haven't taken the time to develop something neat for that, because on AOSP it just works. So I guess that if you find yourself in a situation where you absolutely need to use public wifi, tether it through the burner too. I'm currently enforcing VPN on all end devices so I haven't tried it, but you can also tether through VPN on Android, I think.
VPN
Modern tvs can phone home, send screen captures, you have no control. They have independent internet connections
Hmmm, didn't know about this. How about your home TV?
Smart TVs? Try not logging in to anything.
I often do. Most of the time that I do I don't use it much at all. But last time I made the decision to leave it home.
Was miserable. Never again.
I like leaving ~40-50% of my schedule open when travelling for chance encounters, in-the-moment ideas, and just lounging in a cafe with my laptop listening to local lore.
I've traveled both with and without a laptop and if I'm trying to enjoy my travels, then I don't need a laptop at all. I can do 99% of my work on my phone while I am traveling and then do the heavy lifting when I get back to my desktop/laptop computer at home.
like that site
I always take my laptop when I travel. It's not really that much of an inconvenience that I need to seek out an alternative.
Where are all these open monitors you can just plug into? Seems most hotels these days have the TV's hard wired into something so its not easy to access. Then what, re-arrange furniture to actually use it comfortably?
What conferences have breakout tables with monitors for demos/collab?
What coffee shop or airport lounge has stray monitors about? My only experience has been empty cubicles at best.
What's your backup comms if something happens to your phone?
What are you really saving vs < 3lb laptop that charges via USB-c?
Sure phones got better by having desktop modes and there's some clever portable keyboards, but laptops also got better at being mobile.