This past year I’ve had the opportunity to travel a bit more than I had in recent years, giving me a real opportunity to change the way I’ve travelled in the past. By reducing travel clutter, I’m talking about all that paper your wasting printing travel itineraries, rental car or hotel confirmations and endless other items you might print for your trip. Our Nokia devices actually help us with this.

In recent years there has been a real push to do your part to help the environment. Saving the environment is great but let’s face it many won’t go out of their way to make an impact unless it either benefits them or is easier than the way they use to do things. Here’s a tip that does both.

In my travels nearly every hotel, rental car agency, airline, bus or train I’ve ever used suggest printing your confirmations, itineraries and other miscellaneous items. I’m here to tell you to stop wasting the paper and toner.

Nokia Devices and PDF Documents

First you’ll need to verify your device has a PDF reader. Most if not all S60 devices released in the last year or two has Adobe Acrobat Lite either pre-installed or available for download from Nokia or Adobe. Nokia Internet Tablet uses have Evince available for install, check application manager or Maemo Garage.

Next step is to install some kind of PDF creator. There’s the standard Adobe Acrobat Pro (version 8 or less) or Acrobat Standard (version 9). Wikipedia has a rather comprehensive list of PDF readers, creators and editors; one of these is bound to suit our purpose here.

Now that we have the necessary software, let’s start printing–electronically that is! Print those confirmations, itineraries and other necessary documents. Using whatever method suits you best, transfer those electronic documents to your S60-powered Nokia phones or the N8×0 Internet Tablets.

Email backup. Before our recent vacation, I not only put these documents on my Nokia N810 but also the wife’s Nokia N800. As an emergency back up plan you could even email yourself these documents for safe keeping in Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other locations. In a pinch you could gain access to these documents if some unforeseen disaster should befall your beloved devices.

Passport Copy. The uses of PDF isn’t solely limited to these temporary or one time use documents. For years, police have been advocating making photocopies of your entire wall’s contents in case of loss or theft. Going out of the country? Consider scanning your passport ahead of time. In the event your passport is lost, stolen or the victim of some horrible accident, the digital copy could easily be produce as evidence for the local embassy or consulate to help expedite get your safe return home.

Conclusion

When I started considering and looking at the possibilities, they truly started jumping out at me. Before I knew it, I was taking all sorts of documents to work to scan into PDFs on the Xerox machines. I started carrying with me important documents I might need in a pinch: everything from powers of attorney to medical histories. Be sure to take appropriate and prudent security measures with documents sensitive in nature. Even if you don’t plan on carrying around a single document, this method can still be helpful for quick and easy reference at home as well. It’s also convenient knowing I can access all these documents from my Nokia devices.