Product Review: Travel Stix Let You Travel Safely With Your Life In A Pocket

With the kids heading off to college, and family travel in full swing, let technology help you keep all your critical information in one safe place. Pack your Travel Stix…

What’s on the secure, encrypted Travel Stix? For starters, you fill in all your contact information, your medical power of attorney, health history, medication list and insurance information. But you can also include and customize your travel itinerary. If you’re like me, you leave the computer at home and that’s where you left all those reservation confirmations. Travel Stix includes a resource document for health and travel information, such as links to the U.S. State Department and Center for Disease Control, along with many travel sites.

More than a USB flash drive, Travel Stix fits in your wallet – thinner than a credit card, yet has a swing-out half-height USB connector, and stores two gigabytes of information. Even better, it is preloaded with documents and forms (in both English and Spanish) for safe travel. You can add documents of your own, and even back up your work files on it, before you hit the road. If you’re traveling with children, be sure to include recent photos of them. If a child is lost, you’ll have the current photo ready to show to the authorities.

At a cost of $19.95, pack one Travel Stix and leave one Travel Stix at home, loaded with your itinerary and emergency information so a family member or babysitter can reach you. Load up a Travel Stix for grandparents traveling to see you, and send it to them before their trip.

Travel Stix come preloaded with relevant forms for domestic and International travel, in Adobe PDF format. Plug the Travel Stix into your computer, and type right on the detailed forms. You can print the forms to leave with family. When an original signature is required, such as your will, you can print to sign documents by hand, and scan back onto the Travel Stix.

Don’t just think of loading travel details when you take off. I loaded my Travel Stix with copies of my birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, homeowners insurance policy and my entire address book of phone and email addresses. And, of course, music and a manuscript I’m working on. And there is still a gig free to load my Prague photos for safekeeping. Travel Stix comes from Solex Enterprises, LLC in New York.

TIP: You might want to password-protect the USB device, or use encryption software for your documents.