Gary Gale

First there was the paperless office which was going to free us from the drudgery of sheets of paper. That was first mooted as an idea in 1975 and my desk is still covered in the stuff. Hmm.

Then there was wifi which was going to liberate us from wires and turn us all into wireless road warriors. A quick rummage through the contents of the laptop bag I carry with me each day does tend to disprove that idea somewhat.

Firstly there's my iBook, shown here snoozing with that gently-pulsing-behind-the-fascia light that's Apple's trademark.

To make sure my iBook doesn't get scratched by all the other kit, it lives in a nice neoprene sleeve and travels with another of Apple's trademarks, a single button mouse.

The iBook cares, feeds and nourishes my 3rd generation iPod, which of course, comes with a supply of cables, plugs and adaptors.

Like my iBook my iPod get protected from scratches by a generously donated iPod Sock which coincidentally coordinates nicely with the iBook sleeve.

After verging dangerously into interior design territory, what with matching socks and sleeves, it's a bit of a let down to come back to earth with some good old generic PC hardware, courtesy of a Dell Latitute D600 laptop. I seem to continue to have issues with Dell's battery life which is probably the reason the laptop top isn't booted up in this photo.

Then there's a variety of cables and stuff; a Dell power brick and Microsoft Wheel mouse for the Latitude and the mains to mini USB charger for my phone.

Ah yes, my phone, that's also a piece of kit I lug around but which was taking these photos rather than appearing in them. It's a Razr for Motorola, the company which suffers from occasional vowel loss syndrome, which is why its other phones are called things like the Rokr and the Slivr. I think it's supposed to be hip, or groovy or something.

That's a lot of kit to carry; I guess that's why we're still at the stage where it looks like we need an artic to carry everything, rather than being fully fledged road warriors.