USB IR Pod for UK, Dutch and Swedish NEO devices

To recap, I was travelling with the Land Rover G4 Challenge. This is about NEO, which I only bought a few weeks before travelling. And which in the event proved itself as an indispensable and very practical writer's companion.

But I had NEO for writing. And across two continents and four countries it performed flawlessly. In Laos, with temperatures of up to 38°C and humidity of 80 percent at the start of the monsoon season, my biggest problem was making sure that the sweat from my brow wasn't dripping onto the keyboard. On Bolivia's Alto Plano, on the other hand, my main difficulty was feeling the keyboard at night when temperatures dropped, at their lowest, to minus 16°C.

I tried to do most of those night work situations in a Range Rover Sport or LR3 seat, but at no time was it comfortable. Not the fault of the seats, though. In daytimes while the contestants were doing their competitive tasks involving climbing, running, biking and other very physical activities in seriously difficult conditions, the ability of NEO to be used every time I had something to write about -- notes, diary, or scripts for radio broadcasts -- was just brilliant.

There was dust, heat, mud, wind, and all kinds of environmental conditions where I wouldn't have dared to take even a tough iBook out of its case. Besides, even in good circumstances I'd have been hobbled by battery limitations and the fact that most notebook screens are not viewable in bright outside conditions. Battery with NEO was a non-issue. As was screen visibility while sitting on a log in the midday heat of Laos or the chilling breeze of a height in Bolivia halfway towards the cruising altitude of a jetliner.

Brian Byrne