How many gadgets do you travel with? Laptop, Blackberry, personal phone, converters, back-up batteries…..the list goes on and on. I get around the world and back with my MacBook, U.S. cell phone and my tri-band phone that has SIM cards for each country. Seems simple enough, but not having a mobile phone that converts to each country gets more cumbersome each trip.

How is this possible, you may ask of an employee of a magazine called Global Traveler? Well, the short answer: It has worked so far thanks to call forwarding, but it is becoming more of a nuisance than a convenience. Each time I touch down, I have to make sure my SIM card is working and has cash on it. With all the phones I see fellow travelers using that work from one country to another, I realized a while ago that I wanted one too. So, finally fed up, my first stop yesterday was to my local Verizon Wireless store.

I have been a loyal customer of Verizon for over six years. But the news I learned, over and over from various customer service people (not one story was the same either!), was that there are only a limited number of their phones that may be used overseas - three old models and one new Blackberry. For new customers the phone I liked would be $100, but for the loyal customers like me, it would cost $400 up front. Unfortunately, the only new accessory I have been granted thus far is a headache. It seems that other networks have plenty of quad band phones, but to switch networks…don’t even get me started!

I could go into the details of the various degrees of headaches, but I fear it would not do us any good.  It looks like it’s time for me to flip back through our Tech Toys articles and see if I missed anything. If you are happy with your global gadgets, please let me know what carrier you use so I can decide where to switch.  It’s time to cut down on all my gadgets to go!

-Alex Young, Vice President and Associate Publisher