What are your television habits when you travel?  Do you take your television with you (Slingbox comes to mind)?  Do you bring extra cables so you can hook your laptop up to the hotel’s television and watch media through your laptop?  Or do you bring an even smaller device to do the same thing?

The bigger question:  how do you consume your media when you travel?

I do not watch too much television.  The local news, episodes of Clean House on the Style Network, and Cardinals’ Baseball.  None of these things, in general, are things I can get when I’m traveling, except through my laptop and the hotel’s Internet connection.  When I am gone for more than a day or two, I like to catch up on my hometown news just to be sure nothing horrific happened in my neighborhood.  I can do that by loading up one of the local television station’s websites, and watching their broadcast of the news live.  I can catch up on epsiodes of missed television shows by logging onto that show or network’s website.  The only thing I can’t get is my baseball, and I’m not going to die without my baseball.

I have been known to pack a couple DVD’s for a trip, or load them onto my laptop for viewing.  I have a video ipod, but watching a movie on that thing is not a great experience for my eyes, so watching through the laptop is preferred.  When traveling with the family, we usually pack the portable DVD players, which can then be easily hooked up to motel televisions.

Some hotels are getting into the act these days and providing easy ways for you to hook up your personal media to their in-room systems, including providing docks for media players and easy-t0-access video ports.   Most of these are higher-end or business hotels, which means the local Motel 6 isn’t going to have these kinds of amenities.  I would argue that maybe they should, to accommodate traveling families.  Along with free WiFi or Internet access, I would argue these should be standard accommodations these days.

How do you consume media when you are traveling?

Over the past 2-3 years I have reviewed other DYMO printers, and when the latest model showed up at my door the question in my mind is what’s different.

Like every product we review here, we really test it. For over a week the review unit has sat in place of my older DYMO Printer, the first thing I noticed is that it is much faster. Having a variety of labels here for the DYMO, I played around with various Label sizes to see if they had improved the feed mechanism. One of the challenges I have had in the past was switching out the label spools. They did not disappoint because it took less than 30 seconds to switch out a spool. The printer is thermal so it never needs ink which keeps the cost of ownership down.

The best part is that this unit had a dual print head. Perfect for having postage labels in one bin, and regular address labels in the other. One thing that my wife likes is that she can print address labels for boxes she is shipping to her family in Japan. One thing I noticed is that the software has been updated and it validates addresses for you as well. The unit handled all of the International label printing as well.

Overall very impressed, I did not think a product line like this could get better but the folks at DYMO did not disappoint. The DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo is faster then ever, and it is a product line that I use here at GNC. Check out the full line of DYMO Printers at Dymo.com

Disclosure: Review unit was provided to Geek News Central by DYMO for Review purposes. Companies are never guaranteed a positive review. All products reviewed at Geek News Central are put through a minimum of 3 days of real world usage. The above unit was used in a standard home office for over a week, views expressed by Todd @ Geek News Central are based on real experiences with the products we review.