I’m not at home, but I am working. I’m writing this in the visitor centre of Microsoft’s Redmond campus, where I’m attending a press conference.

After all the travel I’ve done this week, I wish I were at home. Waking up in a hotel every day isn’t actually all that great — even when the hotel room is three times the size of my room in London.

If I were working from home, I’d probably check my email from my bedroom (in my pyjamas, of course), get dressed and then move my laptop down to the kitchen, from where I’d write and make calls (rather than rushing to get dressed so I’m not late for work).

If it were nice out, I’d maybe go work on some stories in the back garden — thank you, wireless — while I work on my tan (rather than let the flourescent lighting in the office continue to make me look ill).

I’m not big on working at coffee shops, but I may walk over to the local one for lunch, or just make my own in the kitchen (rather than take my daily walk to Tescos for a crappy sandwich.)

Not that I mind the office — I’d rather go in most days of the week than stay at home alone all the time. I think, for me at least, the benefit comes in breaking things up a bit. I’m happiest if I can be in the office a few days, be at events now and then, and work from home from time to time — hey, look, flexible working.

That’s a few paragraphs to get me to my question: Are any of you working from home today? And if so, what’s your daily routine like?

Location, they say, is everything. But the whole point of mobile, flexible working is that location no longer matters, right?

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Bellevue, Washington – close to Seattle (and even closer to Microsoft). Because of the wonders of modern technology, I can write this on my laptop and upload it via the hotel’s $12.95 a day (plus tax) wireless connection – all from a distance, whenever I choose.

Thanks to the wonders of nice hotels, I’m sitting at solid wood desk in a leather chair in a room bigger than the entire top floor of my flat, with a big picture window. It’s quiet and comfortable. I could see myself being productive here.

It makes me think though: I wouldn’t want to work from home everyday. If I lived in this hotel room, I could quite happily do so (although, if I could afford to live in this hotel room, I wouldn’t need to work). But while I live in a nice enough flat, I’m not sure I’d want to spend every single day in it, staring at the in-need-of-fresh-paint walls and distracted by chores like laundry.

Sure, I could abscond to a coffee shop or pub or park for a change of scenery. But how productive am I really going to be while lying in the sun?

Mobile working requires a more disciplined level of concentration, it would seem. Then again, maybe I just need to get used to working in my home or a coffee shop or wherever else. If people can get used to fluorescent overhead lights and open plan offices and constantly ringing phones, surely my flat’s not so difficult…

The first hurdle with mobile working is trying to figure out how to connect. The hotel I’m staying in has a cable connection on the desk of my room, as well as T-Mobile wireless (them again – pretty good covereage, shame about the customer service), which doesn’t seem to work everywhere.

So I’ve opted – for ease of use and cost – to stick with the desk connection, which means I can’t work out by the pool or even on my balcony, which seems a shame, given the view of the palm trees…

The other problem with mobile working is the quality of the connection. This being a posh resort, the speed isn’t bad. But this being a posh resort filled to the vaulted ceilings with business types intent on checking their email constantly, the speed does lag sometimes.

Indeed, one of the conference sessions I attended yesterday was packed. Despite people clearly wanting to attend this – and being forced to stand at the back – several people had laptops, Blackberrys, and phones out while the speaker was, well, speaking.

They weren’t just sending a quick message, either. One woman spent the session replying to email, while another guy couldn’t take his eyes off his Blackberry, which kept making little beeping noises. But this one woman, she actually had a phone conversation in the session.

Okay. I’m advocating mobile working. But this isn’t what I want. These people are failing to realise that sitting in the session and listening to the speaker is work for some of us, and we’d like to be able to hear. If they just want to reply to email, and ignore the speaker, maybe they should go sit by the pool…