The trouble is the heavy flow of messages means devoting regular time to sorting, deleting and occasionally responding to your email. If you leave town for a few days, you know your inbox will be bloated when you return. The usual solution is to buy a laptop , load it up with the same software that is on your desktop, and cart it around with you when on the road. Indeed, some people now use a laptop as their main machine, perhaps augmenting it with a better keyboard and screen when in the office. That is all well and good, but not my style .
Laptops are too heavy, too expensive, and too much trouble to connect to hotel phone systems.
I got rid of mine in January 1997, and haven't looked back since. Sure, sometimes it would be nice to have one, but I find that as planes get more and more crowded, my ability and motivation to work on them drops quickly. And once I get to where I am going, there are usually plenty of computers for me to work on. Back about 18 months ago, I wrote an essay with tips for dealing with this issue , covering many of the services then available for those of us who are laptop-free. A number of new products and services have come out that make it worth revisiting the issue.