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HAVE TECH WILL TRAVEL HOME IS WHERE THE HARD DRIVE IS TEXT: TOM PRICE It doesn't matter whether you're on a mountain bike trail in Moab, a ski slope in Montana or tarmac in Mexico City, the exchange between travelers is always the same. Where are you from, how long have you been gone and where are you headed next? Then you get to the important stuff: Have you found a decent I nternet cafe? In the past, your friends back home may have been happy to receive a post- card or two. But now your deskbound buddies expect you to draft lengthy emails, along with a few photos of your expeditions. Sometimes sending that email means spending hours in an expensive cyber cafe, paying by the minute to watch pop-up ads, and trying to get used to a variety of operating systems, keyboards and the inevitable bugs. Switched-on travelers are now bringing their own tech, for communi- cation as well as entertainment-nothing like watching a DVD to pass the time waiting out a storm at Joshua Tree. Of course, there are tradeoffs. Getting online via cell phone works, but can get expensive fast, and extra drives add weight and cost. We test drove four of the top models, to check out their features, ease of use and durability on the adventure trail. Some are light, others pack more bells and whistles, so decide what's best for you and then hit the road-and don't forget to write. ONE FOR HOME, AND THE ROAD. Laptops often swap size and weight for features, but not the ThinkPad. The secret is the docking port (thin k about the separation disk on the Starship Enterprise and you get the idea). Working at home? The X-22 rests in a Media Slice . _---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63 dock containing a CD/RW drive, a DVD, a Zip drive, and a 3.5 floppy. Heading out? Toggle the side switches, and off comes the travel module. Just 2.2 pounds, the titanium cased X-22 sports a Pentium III 800 MHz chip under the hood running a 20 GB hard drive. The screen is beefy, at 12.1 inches, so eyestrain isn't an issue. Battery life is a very respectable 4.9 hours, plenty of time to write your impressions of life in the Mission District of San Francisco. To shoot those missives to loved ones back home couldn't be easier, because of the built in 802.11 standard wireless connectively. A growing number of Internet cafes, coffee shops, and even generous tech heads now offer this ser- vice free, so you can sip your latte on a Bay Area sidewalk while you X-22 wirelessly downloads your email at 11 Mps speed-check out www.toaster.net for a listing of sites around the world. The X-22 works pretty well on it's own on the road for most travelers, and combined with the Media Slice is good enough to replace your home desktop. If you're looking for one to have, and take, for the long haul, this is it. IBM, www.ibm.com $ 2,449, and an additional $199 for the Media Slice .