Computing is making progress, but so slowly…

I’m sitting in a hotel room on a press trip. Flown on a flight landing at 1000, the first official engagement with the vendor (who remains for the moment anonymous) is tonight. I’ve had all day to hang around and do work stuff. Naturally, you’re never as efficient as you would be at the office, with all the stuff around you that you need. Not least, a nice cup of tea.

But here in the room, miles from anywhere, I’ve hotel-provided wi-fi for free, a laptop whose battery life is measured in half-day – this dual-core machine with 4GB of memory and a 15.4-inch LCD-lit screen lasts for up to seven hours on one charge – and a phone with no charger that won’t last more than a day and a half. I thought I’d brought a cable but managed to forget it in the early dawn rush to the airport. But all I need is a mini-USB to USB cable and they’re near-ubiquitous: I’m reasonably confident of finding or borrowing one sometime in the next 24 hours.

Five years ago, the battery life of laptops was abysmal, and phone chargers were all proprietary. And if you’d asked for wi-fi anywhere but a city centre, you’d have been looked at as if you had horns growing out of your head.

Things are improving, if slowly…