It used to be that when you stepped out of the office to head off on a business trip, the commute home or a holiday, that was the last you heard from your colleagues until you set foot through the door again. Not any more. The days when your inbox creaked under the weight of urgent items for your attention on your return to the office are long gone. The culprits? The mobile phone, the personal digital assistant (PDA), the laptop along with go-anywhere access to the internet.

It used to be that even with this growing incursion into your downtime, there were places you could assume you would be out of reach – on a train, on a plane, on the underground. But even these last bastions of peace and quiet are now being assailed as more and more business travellers (or more probably the companies that employ them) insist on being able to keep in touch wherever they are and whatever they happen to be doing.

The most talked about gadget on the planet in recent months has been Apple’s iPhone, which launched in the US in June and will come to the UK in early November. Apple sold more than a million in less than three months and the device is sure to do well elsewhere, thanks to its combination of a widescreen iPod, phone and web browser. It has its downsides – it is a fingerprint-magnet, doesn’t work on 3G networks (only the slower EDGE technology) and has a whopping price tag .Despite all that, you can’t deny it’s a lovely-looking thing to have in your pocket.

The ever-so-addictive BlackBerry continues to innovate too. The latest version, the 8320, is the first of the popular push e-mail devices to be equipped with wi-fi. Previously, road warriors have had to rely on GPRS to pick up their e-mails while travelling, often at great expense. The addition of wi-fi means that business travellers can now go to any of the hundreds of thousands of wireless hotspots around the globe to get their much-needed fix.

Anyone not wanting to go down the BlackBerry route (or whose companies will not pay the high price of the behind-the-scenes technology) should look at the Palm 750v and the Nokia E61i. The former runs on Windows Mobile (version 5 not the newer 6), supports push e-mail, has a very user-friendly keyboard and works with 3G (but not wi-fi). The latter has a very slick matt black and polished chrome case and features both 3G and wi-fi and a variety of different push e-mail solutions, including BlackBerry – nice work Nokia.

Innovation in laptop design has often been focused on adding faster processors and more memory. Niche laptop maker Dialogue has tried a different tack, with its Flybook range. One of the latest is the Flybook VM. The killer feature is a screen that doesn’t hinge in the usual way. While it can still be used in the traditional manner, the screen can also slide out and tilt, a little like an Angle poise lamp. This means you can wave goodbye to laptop hunch, the stiff neck you get from peering down at the screen. The top of the range version also includes a slot for a SIM card, letting you have access to mobile network broadband without the need for a data card.

Another perfect partner on the road is the Sony Vaio TZ series, with their luscious 11.1-inch screens, compact keyboards and a weight of just 1.24 kilos – less than a typical Harry Potter book. Despite that Kate Moss svelteness, it packs in a DVD re-writer and a battery that lasts up to seven hours (if you’re lucky and don’t use lots of power-hungry applications).

One device that hasn’t done things for me is the T-Mobile Ameo. This lies somewhere between a PDA and laptop in size, with a screen size somewhere between those two extremes. It has an unusual keyboard design – it comes as a separate piece of plastic, which sticks to the screen magnetically as a cover when it’s not in use and is used as an angled screen stand the rest of the time. This top-heavy design just doesn’t work for me.

Another device I’ve struggled with is the O2 XDA Orbit Smartphone, also available as the T-Mobile MDA Compact III and the HTC Artemis P3300 in various countries. It has a lot going for it – built-in satnav, 3G, wi-fi, push e-mail with Microsoft ActiveSync – but it is slow when using applications like Contacts and Calendar and the touch screen access to the phone is challenging at the best of times.

Things never stand still in the world of gadgets and it’s certain that just around the corner are new and more powerful devices that will mean you’re more connected to the office than ever…whether you want that or not.