Bart Henderson is a leading forensic auditor and CEO of Henderson Solutions, an enterprise risk management firm.

I’ve been travelling a lot lately; a pain in its own right, but with travel, comes my dependency on mobile communication.

Perhaps I’m a bit of a dinosaur, because while I’m quite tech savvy, I lug around a Toshiba Qosmio, a beast of a “laptop”.

I use “laptop” in inverted commas because “laptop” is a bit of a misnomer.

When the makers put a sticker underneath warning of burn injury, they weren’t kidding.

You can fry eggs (chicken and human) underneath this box in summer, and a “cooling pad” is a must, or be prepared for the machine crashing, especially while gaming.

Seeing as the Qosmio is a “gaming” box, this can be inconvenient to say the least.

My machine’s power pack alone is heavier than three iPads combined.

Suffice it to say, I use the Qosmio because it’s actually quite stable and capable of serious data crunching.

I travel a lot from time to time, as I’ve mentioned, and lecture extensively, using multimedia in my delivery and approach.

I’ve had SAA on international flights make me unpack my laptop bag during weigh in to prove I’m actually transporting a laptop in my bag and not unwrought gold.

I guess this must tell you that when it comes to modern technology, I shouldn’t be sophisticated enough to comment on issues of higher technical leaning.

My kids are already nagging for iPads and between them have the latest Blackberry and iPhone, while I cling to my brick and my old trackball Bold.

I have stability and I have processing power. For back-up, I have a 1TB external hard drive that fits in my pocket.

Consequently, while I’m that yob that needs a baggage trolley for my technology while I carry my kitters from a sling bag on my shoulder, I’m sorted.

Travelling in Africa I only stay in hotels that offer WiFi, and for the most part, while my connections can be painfully slow at times, I am noticing a definite improvement in my connection speeds of late.

Locally however, unless connected to a LAN, I rely on my external modems, which is where my problems with local mobile communications begin.

I have three external modems: two Vodafone and one Cell C.

The first issue is that my laptop hates all three.

I can’t simply load the software for all three, and choose which one I want to use. The two Vodafone modems get involved in a narcissistic power struggle, and essentially negate one another, leaving me helpless.

I get these constant error messages telling me my modem is already in use, to remove the devices from the “Manage Devices” menu and to reinstall.

The answer then, is to completely uninstall both modems’ software programs, and to reinstall either one or the other.

Just not both!

The thing is, my Cell C modem works better. It works faster and for the most part has the better connection, and so I use it as my preference.

Cell C and Vodafone hate one another too. All too frequently, while I use my Cell C modem, one of my Vodafone modems kills my Cell C.

With all three external modems, I buy data as I need it, meaning sometimes while I’m browsing, I may get dumped running out of data.

Easy enough, because I just switch modems right?

Wrong. Each time I swap modems I need to do a complete uninstall of the previous one I was using.

Recently, I left home for an extended trip to Johannesburg and left my Cell C modem behind for the family to use.

Armed with a Vodafone “stick” and a “flying saucer” I figured I’d be covered.

I have a habit of selecting only 3G as my network preference. The reason is simple: GPRS and EDGE are bone-crunchingly, knuckle-whiteningly slow on the Vodacom network.

These are so bad, it is virtually impossible to load a 1MB file on Gmail. Gmail just resets itself constantly during download, and “times out”.

All well and good, however while using 3G exclusively, I noted that I would constantly fluctuate between 3G and HSDPA.

My connection speeds vary anywhere from 70bps to 33Kbps while my connection gets dropped frequently.

While using my “mobile” (stick or flying saucer) connection in the dashboard view and being dropped, I then get a 635 error code and for the life of me can’t connect using the icon on my taskbar.

I quite literally have to unplug, shut down and reboot.

Once I plug either my modem stick or flying saucer back in, the Vodafone dashboard pops up. Woe betide me if I try to connect from the dashboard - I get another 635 error code.

I literally have to close Vodafone and click “connect” on the task bar icon.

There is only one other place I’ve had such slow connection speeds and such difficulty connecting to a network and that was in Zimbabwe a year or so back.

Now maybe I’m battling because there are “conflicts” that I need to resolve on my laptop.

Maybe I need a crash course in mobile connectivity.

Or maybe Vodacom/Vodafone is just plain crap.

I know its not my beast of a laptop.