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Laptop/photo viewer solely for trip purposes
Since there are so many computer knowledgeable folks here, I thought I'd throw this out there.
I've never taken a laptop on vacation. It's too much of a pain to carry and since I've only got the one, if I lost it or it broke en route I'd be out EVERYTHING I have, on it. For these couple of trips I've got coming up soon I'm toying with getting a smaller, lighter one to use only on trips. It would really just be a photo reviewer, since the LCD on the camera isn't big enough to be truly useful (everything looks great on a small screen and while you can zoom, it's a pain to do that for every photo). If I had time to review my photos in the evenings while I'm on the trip that would really reduce the workload when I got home (I take a ridiculous amount of photos). I wouldn't use this laptop for anything but photo review and possibly wifi while on trips. At home it would function almost as a backup hard drive (even though I already have one of those) and I've no plans to use it as a daily laptop. Anyone have recos on something cheap, small, lightweight (or does small and lightweight preclude cheap?). It doesn't need to be lightning fast, but I don't want to have it get bogged down by large photo files either (especially if I shoot in RAW). I can get an Epson P-3000 photo viewer for 450 bucks, give or take, but that only has a 4 inch LCD screen and I figure for 450 bucks I am heading towards laptop category. Thank you! |
Check out the Dell laptops. They're cheap, they give you world-wide warranty service, and they're normally with a built-in Wi-Fi card. This allows you to send emails, ect. from any hot-spot during your trip. Starbucks usually have a free Wi-Fi hot-spot.
This is a lot cheaper than the viewer you've mentioned. Blackduff |
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Blackduff, is this what you recommend? I'm clueless but would really like something for traveling too. Do you just plug it in to recharge or use a battery and you're ready to go?
Can it also be connected with a cable when an apt. provides internet access? http://tinyurl.com/2sf6ou |
http://tinyurl.com/2sf6ou
333 Mhz Pentium 32mb RAM 2.1 GB HDD "Ancient" technology (last millenium?) Don't waste your money on that! |
Cheap usually means heavy.
You don't want a 6 pound (3 kilo) "portable" for traveling, for sure! |
I've taken my laptop overseas a couple of times including on my trip to Italy this month. My trip started out badly because the Dell laptop broke even before I got there! Long story, but it wouldn't power up...but started working again on my 2nd day in Venice. Until then I was kind of lost, seeking out internet cafes. As a photographer I consider it an essential tool to use while traveling, and of course it's great for keeping in touch with email and Skype (cheap phone calls home).
First of all, if you backup correctly before you leave, you shouldn't worry about losing anything on the laptop if it is lost (falling into the wrong hands? Sure - just take off all sensitive financial info before you depart.) I considered buying a cheap, used laptop for travel only, and that's what I would have done had I found the right one. But if you are converting RAW files, an old laptop will be slow in handling them. And I shot almost 30GB of pictures in two weeks. You'd want a pretty big laptop hard drive to hold your pictures, though you can always upgrade an old laptop's drive pretty cheaply. This trip I brought along a 160GB portable backup drive (Costco: $90) to backup my pictures - extremely handy, took all the worry out of my own computer crashing again. I highly recommend something like this. If your current laptop is more than a year old, you might philosophically consider THAT one your old computer and take it with you and not worry about it if properly backed up. Or search for a used laptop that's acceptable. Or try out the several models of tiny laptops out there - they are pretty good although personally I can't stand tiny keyboards. I didn't have any problem taking my 15" Dell laptop with me on my trip (other than it dying at first!), I just took my laptop bag and stuffed the bag itself full of stuff to carry-on, as a laptop bag counts as a "personal item" unless you travel through London. |
The Asus EEE PC certainly looks slick but from what I can tell it's introduction continues to be pushed back and it's expected price keeps increasing. ;^(
I needed a laptop for a trip this past summer. I didn't want to lug around my 17 and 15 inch machines so I bought a Dell X300 on eBay for about $300. It has a 1.4 Centrino chip,12.2 inch screen and XP Pro. It weighs in at under 3 pounds. I upgraded the 30 gig harddrive to an 80. It has an external DVD drive that I packed but never used. It worked great in Paris and Amsterdam with its built in wireless. I wouldn't travel again without it. Unless that Asus finally hits the market! Rob |
Flygirl, thanks for the timely post. Just yesterday, I decided I needed the exact same thing for an upcoming trip to Italy. I hope the responses keep coming!
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Let me toss out an alternative to a laptop that I used for a few days in Venice before my laptop started working again: portable apps on a memory stick/USB flash drive. Start with portableapps.com .
Anyway, what you do is put programs like Firefox and Skype on a memory stick. Then you can use these programs securely - your info won't be left on the computers you use, so you can worry less about using a public computer. I had all my Firefox bookmarks on mine, and it even had my history copied over! It was almost like being on my own computer. |
I can't imagine bothering to do this but if you must, get a "photo frame". If you shop you can get it for under $100 and you can enjoy it at home also. You just insert your memory card and it plays. You can't edit or anything.
Maybe you can keep track of them some way. I never have this much time when on a trip for sightseeing myself. Just do it at home. Also take a lot of pictures. |
It is cheaper to buy lots of memory cards and fill them up than to buy a laptop just for travel.
If you download your photos on to a laptop and you lose it then you have lost all you holiday snaps. Unless you are going to load it with photosoftware (Photoshop, PSP, Picassa whatever) you probably won't be able to view your RAW photos anyway, or only painfully slowly. And by the time you get to view the photos it will probably be too late to do anything about it anyway, unless you intend loading them on as you take them and view them. That's a lot of stuff to lug around on your hols! |
I recently bought a used laptop for this purpose (and for wifi and writing my travelogues) while traveling.
For me, wieght was of primary concern so in terms of new laptops, the lighter the weight, the more expensive they are. I opted to buy a used Toshiba Portege R100. It's about 3-4 years old. Key features: 2.3 lbs, 40g hard drive, 1.1 ghz, WINXP, 12" screen, and built in wifi.-cost $395 on Craig's List. I watched them on Ebay for about a month and they go for around $400 and up there. I haven't traveled with it yet, but will next month. One drawback-no cd/dvd drive, but that does add weight. |
Here's a $499 Dell laptop.
http://www.dell.com/content/products...l=en&s=dhs There are a few comments on this page too. One poster said it's heavy. I guess it's relative. Probably you should look for something with about 120 Gb hard drive minimum. All of these laptops will work with 120/220 but you will need a plug adapter. I carried a Dell Latitude CP all over the world. It ran fine in the US, Europe, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and it's still running. It's an old computer but it's sturdy. It's heavy in comparison to my new Inspiron 9400. Try to find a laptop which has a DVD writer. This will give you a way of backing all of your photos, etc.. Blackduff |
I'm taking my MacBook Pro (eight days heavy RAW shooting in Venice) as well as a good external drive.
I want backup and the ability to edit on the plane home! For storage / simple viewing the Epson datastore products are hard to beat. Go for the latest ones if you can justify it. Graham www.brearleyphoto.com |
As someone said, memory cards, memory cards!!
WalMart has a $348 computer on sale tomorrow. It is an ACer which our son has often put together for us. |
I have an Epson P2000 and I have traveled extensively with it. I shoot raw on a Canon 5D and have found the Epson viewer reliable and perfect for compact travel.
This past summer I traveled with my small Macbook because I wanted to keep a running blog. Even though the Macbook is fairly light, I got tired of carrying it. This coming summer I will be spending about a month in Europe with photography being an important part of my trip. And I am thinking of going back to the Epson P2000. I will use a 20" rolling bag with no more than 15kg of stuff and a small Mountainsmith fanny pack for the camera, 24mm - 105mm and 50mm lenses I will take. I have to admit that it will be a tough choice not to take a computer because I like to edit on the run. |
Back in the day of film I sometimes found that I'd look at a print and put it aside as "not good", and then later return to find something that I really did like. That is one reason I don't edit on the camera for sure.
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>Asus EEE PC
250€ plus tax in Germany, $400 plus tax in the US. Available "in December", so they say now. It is worth waiting imho. |
I bought an Asus Eee today... neat little machine. It comes loaded with Linux and I was connected to my home wireless network in about 2 minutes. There is no harddrive or optical drive. The memory is 4 gigs of flash. I see there is only about 1.3 gigs of space available on the drive so an external USB harddrive or USB drives are needed. It also has slots for MMC, SD mini SD and micro SD. I've had it about 2 hours but will try to answer any questions you might have. Rob |
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