Thinking about escaping from work for a few weeks in summer? Well forget it. The only places left on Earth without phone transmitters and internet access won't be in your travel agent's brochures. Unless you go cold turkey and leave your mobile at home, the chances of you remaining incommunicado during your vacation are minimal.

Perhaps it's best to adopt the "if you can't beat 'em, join them" approach and impress your boss with efficiency that goes beyond the call of duty. Here are some gadgets that will help you maintain high levels of productivity even in the most trying of environments, such as the pool or beach. There are even a few that might prove handy during your leisure time - if you can squeeze some in.

Work

Possibly the last thing you will want to do is visit an internet cafe, where you'll be fighting for the last ultra-slow PC with hygienically challenged backpackers.

If Spain, Ireland or Germany is your destination, then O2's £500 XDA-connected personal digital assistant is a must-have companion. It uses those countries' GPRS networks, which means it is quicker and cheaper for accessing emails and downloading websites than standard GSM phones. Expect to pay at least £2 a day for the privilege of using it.

Bizarrely, the XDA doesn't work over standard GSM, so if it is tiramisu rather than tapas on the menu, you might be better off with a £200 Handspring Treo or a separate phone and PDA.

All that downloading of emails is sure to leave your mobile thirsty for power, so use the local environment to your advantage. The iSun portable charger soaks up those rays and converts them into power for your mobile, PDA and MP3 player. Its makers claim you'll get a couple of days extra standby time from your Nokia mobile. The recharger usually sells for around £50 (see the links below).

Suppose you want to bob up and down in the pool on your Lilo while rustling up a PowerPoint presentation. Most laptops aren't too fond of the odd splash, to say nothing of total immersion. However, the £3,500 Itronix Go Book Max portable PC, built to be virtually indestructible, will shrug off the occasional dip and still allow you to get on with your work.

A cheaper option might be to invest in waterproof housing for your PDA. Aquapac has a range of products to suit PDAs and mobile phones. Its latest version, the £19.99 PDA Classic Plus, is large enough to house both your Compaq iPaq and any expansion modules (GPS etc). Aquapac also has a range of inexpensive waterproof casings for digital cameras and camcorders.

Music

Thanks to MP3 and hard disk-based mini jukeboxes, it is now possible to take your CD collection on holiday. Current top models include the latest incarnation of the Creative Labs Jukebox - the £349.99 Nomad 3. It features 20 GB of storage - enough for more than 150 CDs. If you want a radio too, then the £350 SonicBlue Rio Riot has 20 GB storage and an FM tuner

For musical accompaniment to barbecues on your balcony, you'll also need a pair of speakers. Trouble is, most travel speakers either sound awful or are so large they take up too much room in your baggage. Ellula Sound has come up with the wonderful idea of inflatable speakers. They compress nicely while in your case and then on arrival, you simply blow them up. They include an amplifier and power adapter so you just connect them to your MP3 player/CD player. There are three designs all costing £29.99, though you'll probably want to pass on the Budweiser beer can version.

Even tinier is the Soundbug (£34.95 from, a PC mouse-sized gadget that turns any hard surface into a speaker. The battery-powered device even works with windows and walls. Sound quality is not bad.

Cameras

The killer application for photo messaging, as recently introduced in the UK by T-Mobile, has to be the "wish you were here" shot of you lazing by the beach sent to the mobile of someone whose view is of the office car park. Sadly, according to T-Mobile, mobile-to-mobile Photo Messaging only works in the UK. You can't send an image from the Sony Ericsson T38i phone/camera to an email address while roaming, but T-Mobile promises that next year it will be up and running. So you are better off taking a conventional digital camera for this year, anyway.

If you want something really small you can take everywhere, Logitech's new £120 pocket digital camera is a must. It is small enough to almost hide behind a credit card, yet is capable of taking 1.3 megapixel images that are just about worth printing as well as being used in emails.

Fuji's £80 Axia SlimShot and SiPix's £50 Blink take good VGA standard images and are a few pounds cheaper.

For more serious snappers, Olympus has unveiled the £450 C-4000Zoom - its first 4 megapixel camera to retail for under £500, while Fuji is touting its stylish 3 megapixel model - the FinePix F601 - for around the same price.

Other stuff

Still not mugged up on your European languages? To spare embarrassment at restaurants and shops, you need to whip out the Ectaco £179.95 UT-103 Universal Translator. It uses a voice recognition system, so you simply say the word you want translated and then it barks it back at you in the other language.