Is taking a Laptop Wise?
 

I will be travelling to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos for 5 weeks and staying in 3* hotels that offer internet access in the room. Is it worth taking a laptop with us on the trip to stay connected with friends at home? Will it be safe to leave it in the hotel rooms and the baggage check areas if I place the laptop in a suitcase? My other alternative is to use internet cafes and not burden myself at all with a laptop. Any advice would be greatly appreciated since we will be leaving in a few days. Thank you

If you are in urban or tourist areas (LP, Saigon, Hanoi) there will be many cheap Internet cafes, so factor that into your thinking.

We like to have a lap top with us - we are just back from holiday and bought an Asus Eee PC before going just for holidays. It has been really good, light, cheap and easy to lock away.
I also have a Blackberry and this can be useful too if you just want to keep in touch (need to be careful though as not good for Japan & S.Korea).
There are lots of internet cafes too - I guess its just we are all so used to having PCs in our day to day lives that we feel we need them.
We used the Eee Pc to also upload some photos - but again I guess you could also do this in an internet cafe & use Flickr type accounts.
Many airports now have Wifi - including Hanoi and having your own PC lets you pass time well whist waiting for connections.

It depends on how you'll use the laptop. If you want to email friends/family from time to time internet cafes are fine. We have typically not brought along a laptop, but this last trip we did. Cheryl wanted it to manage the thousands of photos she took, and we both used it for some travel writing. We also used it for financial transactions (paying bills at home, moving money around), which are no doubt safer on your own computer.

If you really need a laptop for business then take it with you! But if you only use it for email then leave it back home!

When you have a laptop you also have to find some way to secure it - unless you plan to carry it with you everywhere! It may not be the hotel staff that steals it from your room, there are foreign tourists that make a habit of breaking into rooms and stealing valuables. Not too many safety boxes are large enough to fit a laptop in.

Like the other msg said - lots of cheap internet shops available all over. If you use a laptop to store photos in you can also use a much smaller portable hard drive to do the same thing.

You could drop your laptop and ruin it or have it stolen and be back at the same spot - no laptop on your trip!

I do carry a FLASH DRIVE with me. On this flash drive I have a portable FireFox program that is identical to what I have on my Mac and laptop PC at home. Same favorites, same saved addresses, etc. So, I plug this FD into an internet computer and the screen is identical to my home computers. I also have portable note pad, a WP program, even a portable ClamWin anti virus to check it out before I leave for home. All downloads are free!

Up to you!

Agree with the advice to leave the laptop at home - too heavy and too valuable to mess with when there are plenty of internet cafes around. BTW, the cafes are almost always much cheaper than any business center in a hotel.

SirHalberd - I'm interested in your flash drive solution - did you have any problem with the internet cafes letting you plug something into their computers?

I've done it both ways and I'm happier with my laptop in tow. It's small and lightweight; I just lock it in my suitcase when I'm not in the room.

This probably doesn't apply to everyone, but I am an early riser and like to get all my "business" done in the hotel room with my hair sticking up at around 6am. I have yet to find any internet cafés open before 7am anywhere in SEA and it's a rare thing to find one open past 10pm unless you're in a major urban area like BKK.

Thurs--no one has ever had a problem with me sticking a jump drive into a computer at an internet cafe, although be careful if your drive is formatted for mac.

I always bring my laptop because on top of being in (1) contact with my family, (2)I can follow the news (in case of troubled country..), (3)look for "live" advice form fodorites and other travel related web sites, (4) to find an address or telephone, (5) to enjoy a movie or recorded tv show at any airport or train station, etc. However, look if are confortable with the add on wieght before leaving.. happy and safe travel.

jcontreras
We feel the exact same way as you!
Liz

In SE Asia where it's hot even with airconditioning, I like to sit naked in front of my laptop, can you do that at an internet shop? Do factor these considerations into your planning. (Halfway kidding!) :)

With the time difference, I found that I was awake at 2am with not much to do, so the laptop was a great help, especially if your hotel offers free access.

easytraveler,

Do you have a web cam on your laptop?

I travel very often for work and have to carry my laptop, so when I travel for fun I really, really don’t like to bring it. It’s heavy and it reminds me of work. (I do have the Blackberry which is a very good thing, I agree with the above poster that if you have one that is the best thing to bring.) Some things to consider to factor into your decision:

-if you truly only want to use the PC for e-mailing and not for photographs or other things, IMO it is really not worth it. If you don’t have a Blackberry, but have a phone which works in Asia, you can get a local SIM chip and use it to text people back home; that’s very cheap generally. You can also use cybercafés and possible your hotel lobby (see below). If you have a use for a PC for other functions then you may want to bring it, subject to some thoughts below.

-there are a good number of cybercafés in the places you are going, see http://cybercafes.com/ or http://cybercafe.com/ for a list by country and city. You can use these for e-mails and for sending photos to your home mailbox and also transferring photos from your stick to a disk to free up room on your camera.

-it’s quite likely that your hotel will have a PC in the lobby that you can use for free if all you want to do is check e-mails on a daily basis, or download photos. If they are wired for internet in the rooms, my guess is that they have also provided for a PC in the lobby, they sound pretty savvy.

-it’s quite possible that if it is wireless or a dial up it may be quite a slow connection, and so the “ease” of using it for e-mails may not be worth it. (I just spend a very frustrating 4 days at the airport hotel in Male with the slowest connection you can imagine; I ended up one day going to the local cybercafé because they had a much faster connection.) Just because they have “internet access”, does not mean it is adequate.

-check your carry-on limits for your US flight and all your other flights within Asia for the class you are in and make sure you want to bring the PC, as it will count as one piece unless you can use the case to carry other things. This may be a factor on your return flight especially, when you may have purchases that you want to bring on board with you and may regret having the PC count as one piece.

- it’s probably safe in your room, my only concern with a 3 star would actually be other <i>guests</i>, not the staff. The room is probably not going to have a safe large enough to lock your PC into, so if you leave it in your suitcase, that will be the first place people will look. If it’s a PC given to you by your office with lots of important stuff on it, I would rethink it. If its your home PC and you don’t mind the very small potential risk of losing it, then if you have weighed all of the above, it’s probably OK. Be sure you have made a copy of all the important data already on it.

-it is very likely that the internet connection in your room is going to be wireless, think twice about doing financial transactions on this as there is no security at all and your neighbor in the next room could be looking at your credit card numbers. (This is very true in cybercaf&eacute;s too.)

THURSDAYSD

&quot;SirHalberd - I'm interested in your flash drive solution - did you have any problem with the internet cafes letting you plug something into their computers? &quot;

*

No problem with plugging a Flash Drive into an internet shop computer. Most of the managers understand what it is. Sometimes tourists plug portable hard drives in to download photos too!

Problems you might come across are computers too old with no access for USB or the USB socket is in an inconvenient place.

Some computers may have a good anti-virus program that blocks the FD, usually you can work around it.

Sometimes you pick up a virus that you do not want to bring home to your own computer. That's why I have (free) ClamWin on my FD. Before I leave for home I debug my FD. Before I open it up on my home computer I run another anti-virus check on it. So far so good!

I usually go to the same places in Thailand all the time. I prefer a wall at my back to keep people from checking out my PW. I write my passwords my Notepad and cut and paste them to the appropriate blanks and cut down on some keylogging attemps. Every little bit helps. Use a password on your FD in case you lose it. I have a long cord on my FD to make it easier to notice when I get up to go home. I would hate to forget the bugger in a computer!

Newer looking computers work best and the USB sockets are convenient!

My FD works okay in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines and I think I used it in Japan too!

(Portable FireFox, ClamWin, Notepad and a portable WP are all free downloads.)

Good luck.

SirHalberd - thanks so much for the detailed info! I'll add a flash drive to my things-to-buy list for the next trip - after the quad-band cell phone.

I take my laptop all the time now to avoid all the hassles of security and dealing with internet cafe's. IMHO hunting down internet cafes and spending time in them is not my idea of fun. I do whatever I need to in the privacy of my room at my leisure and comfort.

Laptops are smaller now and I find them no problem whatsoever. I can literally carry mine with two fingers. To me the advantages of having one outweigh the logistics of taking one.

Aloha!

Sometimes we'll take a laptop on a short trip, to England to see my family for example. But generally it means we have to do some work. For our regular holidays we prefer not to bring it.

We often travel for 4-5 weeks, and I can't be bothered to drag it though all those airports if I don't have to. It's easy to find internet cafes and I'd just be too worried about losing such an expensive piece of equipment. It's just not worth it.

I enjoy the feeling of being unplugged. with our laptops, but my husband always brings a flash drive.

I've been thinking about getting the Ipod touch, which is the i-phone with internet access but no phone and no monthly fee, it could be the perfect traveling device for places where you can easily find wireless access.

janev - I have read about the Asus eee PC. It sounds very interesting - extremely small and light weight.

My very stupid question is - if you are at a hotel with a LAN connection of some type - not wireless - can you hook up to it with some kind accessory plug?

Thanks!

I love having my laptop with me. I use it to download photos each night, write in my journal for my website, send emails, check out things online, call home via Skype, etc.
However, it helps that mine is extremely lightweight (2.2 lbs). I would never travel with my 7 lb work laptop for example. But my little one is thinner and lighter than a typical fashion magazine. I bought it used, just for travel. It's a Toshiba Portege r100.

One of the things to remember is that even if a hotel says they have internet access, it doesn't always work and it's not always fast. Sometimes there are other problems. Last trip, I could not access my website via FTP through the hotel's wifi. It was a hassle, but oh well.
Still, I won't travel without mine now.

Hi everyone,
I now into my first 2 weeks of our trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I decided at the last minute not to take my computer and instead bring a flash memory stick with a few of the suggested portable applications on it. In addition, I brought with me a 40 Gig Photobank and 160 Gig compact hard drive as a back up for the pictures stored on the Photobank. The Photobank and large hard drive is needed to store my pictures in both RAW and Jpeg format. Although I am suffering from Laptop withdrawal, I am pretty happy with the idea of not taking the laptop. So far Have had no troubles in getting access to computers at either cheap internet cafes ( 1USD for 1 hour) or free service at some of the hotels that we are staying in. The only problem I am experiencing is finding a computer that is USB enabled for my flashcard snd backup hard drive. It is only after trying a few conmputers that I can find one that works properly. So far I am surviving without my laptop and quite happy with my reduced baggage and not worrying about losing it. Cheers

Don't forget to scan(for viruses) all of your equipments before you stick them into their usual slots back at home.