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Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

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Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#11

Post by a3n »

moxplod wrote: post #7

If you are in USA, the best thing I found was T-Mobile has at 100GB hotspot plan for $50 a month which each of you can get one. I have faced this a lot, since I have been a digital nomad for 8+ months now. Other things I did: like downloading songs and movies on my ipad when I have wifi has saved me a lot of GBs. On windows there is a setting called "metered connection", which will make sure it does not download majo…

I drive a truck everywhere. When i was on tmobile i was often out of range.

I am out of range much less on verizon.

I wonder if it's worth it for the OP to have accounts with more than one company.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#13

Post by jamal-kumar »

ic0n0cl4st wrote: post #10

For The last 7 years of working and traveling 50% of the time my setup has been two iPhones and a Macbook Air. I have about 30 sim cards now. In Europe I mostly use tmobile. Hotel lobbies usually have free wifi, as do cafes, hostels and bars. The main difference is I kind of hate talking to people about work so I avoid video chat and try to keep all work communications on Slack/Signal. America was actually the worst…

I'm strongly with you on video chat and avoiding that if and when possible. It's a strong marker of spending too much time on that garbage anyways of things going in the wrong direction in regards to productivity

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#15

Post by client4 »

I traveled across Asia for 3 years. I had a Mission Workshop Radian and attached Spar which I loved. As for data you should expect to do most of your work in co-working or coffee shop spaces as cellular data still doesn't cut it if you're on video calls all day. As for the rest of my tech set-up (loosely):.

* Bose in ear noise cancelling headphones with microphone

* 2xPhones (A pixel 2 main and Huawei P30 Light backup) this is because I'd be screwed if I didn't have a phone.

* Lenovo X1

* RAV 90w charger with two USBC ports

* iPad pro (downloaded Netflix content, games, books)

* Earpod Pros

* A 1000mah charger I got as conference swag

* Misc cables/micro SD cards

Largely I considered a drink or food every two hours as rent for coffee shop space where I would do bandwidth heavy work (and charging). Another 2-4 hours of work I would hotspot my phone and largely use ssh.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#17

Post by no-dr-onboard »

a3n wrote: post #9

Semi truck driver. I have a laptop, and a phone. I use the phone's hotspot. "Being on the internet" is not part of my job, and many nights I don't bother to take the laptop out of its bag. I never use wifi because I'm paranoid. While driving I listen to podcasts or streaming. I never predownload anything. I don't know if I ever get throttled. Sometimes, even in this day and age, I'm out of cell range, and my podcasts…

> Which is not at all helpful to you, except possibly to observe: the less you need, the better it is.

Thanks for this.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#18

Post by jamal-kumar »

I've been pretty happy with spending most of my time in Costa Rica for nearly a decade or so. The pandemic numbers here have been really low, partly because people are fairly health-conscious here. Anti maskers are basically just gringos nobody likes or want anything to do with here instead of crazy people yelling vitriol in grocery stores. I don't live at the beach, because frankly it's kind of distracting having people come up to you wearing headphones asking why you're working and not vacationing, but if I want I can just go and hang out in a hammock in a less than 6-10 hour bus ride to whichever spot. There's also a LARGE amount of fibre optic internet rollout here, MUCH more than my 1st world home country that seems to be falling apart by the day, so I only have to rely on 3g/4g when the power goes out once in a while. If it stays out longer than my battery lasts I let people know I'm on a bus to find somewhere that isn't out after checking the power company website. Another thing about avoiding the beach is avoiding the hours long blackouts.

As for my setup it's literally just my laptop and some notebooks in my bag. I have two bags, one carry-on and one backpack, and minimalize as much as I can so that if I have to get on a plane for whatever reason in short order I'm pretty much already good to go. The heaviest things I own are probably books, but they're pretty sweet books so I take the weight.

Re: Ask HN: Digital Nomads: What's Your Setup?

#20

Post by jrwoodruff »

localhost wrote: post #14

Why not use a phone for zoom calls? This way that doesn’t impact your hotspot data cap? Another thing to consider is an iPad LTE and an unlimited plan for that.

I have actually been doing this when I need to. It works well, except those rare occasions where I need to screen share. And even then it's usually easy enough to have someone else share for me. The iPad LTE is a great idea.
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