Months ago, when the debate between Nancy and me over whether to bring a laptop on this trip was raging, we were split on the decision. I didn't want to bring one and she adamantly wanted to. My reasoning had to do with the added weight and space of the equipment along with the responsibility of protecting it from the weather and theft. She, on the other hand, vehemently argued that we could not attain our financial goal of covering part of the expenses of our journey without one. In addition, she argued, we will need a way to keep up with the writing for Reach the World.
"If we're going to be selling advertising space on our site we need traffic," she argued. "In order to get traffic we are going to have to write daily blogs, maintain a picture gallery, and keep up with the people on our mailing list. In addition to that we have to write magazine and newspaper articles to attract even more people to our site. On top of all that we have to write up activities for students on both our educational site and for Reach the World. Oh yeah, and what about the You Tube videos? Video editing isn't possible in the confines of internet cafes."
In the end she won. I bought an IBM Thinkpad plus extra batteries - a total of over 7 pounds. Although it's slow and heavy, it's supposed to be rugged and well-built. Maybe, just maybe it will last the entire trip. I'll let you know how it works out as the trip progresses. A computer with a solid state drive instead of a spinning HDD would be the best way to go since they are much more resistant to damage caused by vibrations or the abuse of being on the road. I'm convinced that the best laptop for our purposes would
be the Panasonic Toughbook. It's probably the most rugged laptop built, intended for withstanding extreme environmental conditions. We would have loved to get a Toughbook but the price tag was just a bit too steep - well actually the price was way out of our budget. The other drawback was its weight. There are many lightweight laptops that may also be great for bicycle touring: the Toshiba R500 and the Sony Vaio TZ150. Look for the solid state drive. They are fast, use less energy, and less prone to crash due to vibration or dropping.
In all fairness it's probably better we take a laptop (especially for Nancy since I'll be the one to lug all this equipment). In addition to Nancy's argument, bringing our own laptop is a much more secure way to protect all our valuable usernames and passwords, eg. our Charles Schwab, PayPal, and bank accounts. We plan on doing just about all our financial transactions online and don't want the cybercrooks in internet cafes getting access to any of them. Identity theft has, all of a sudden, taken on a real priority for us. With a laptop, I can set my own firewall, protect/check my computer for viruses/spyware, and safely manage our passwords with an encrypted password manager - more on all these later.
Suppose you didn't want to lug a laptop around? After all, the vast majority of the cyclotourists we meet don't have one. I have a plan for that, it's actually a backup plan if we lose our laptop. There are basic, no-frills software packages you can load onto a 1GB pendrive that can be used on any Windows computer in which you have access to the USB drive. The only thing I would need an internet cafe for is the operating system and internet connection - everything else safely resides on my tiny pendrive literally no heavier than a pen. These portable applications will be the topic of my next entry.
4 comments:
You should check out the ASUS eeePC - for $400 it will handle all you describe except the video editing...
And you could to that online at www.jumpcut.com
Craig,
I seriously thought about getting an eee PC but because of the small screen/keyboard/memory size it wouldn't work for what I wanted it to do. With the advent of the eee PC 900 this all changes. It has a 8.9" screen and larger keyboard and at least twice the memory (SDHC). It comes with either Linux or Windows. Unfortunately its scheduled to be shipped from Taiwan sometime in late May and too late for us to purchase it. I think it will be perfect for our trip! I might just order one when I come through the States.
We bought a new laptop - an Acer Aspire One for under $400. I compared it with an Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind and choose it because of its cost and keyboard. Of all the sub-notebooks it has the eaiest to use keyboard (the Eee PC was smaller but I've heard lots of complaints about keyboarding on it). Its not at all hard to type on the Aspire.
The Aspire has a SDHC slot in which the card can also be used in our video camera. On top of that it also has a multicard reader, 3 USB slots and a 120 GB HDD. It comes with Windows XP and has an Intel Atom processor (I believe this is the fastest processor you can get on a sub-notebook now, anything else will be slower). I didn't get the 12 GB solid state memory because I do alot of video editing - I'll let you know how that goes when I do it! If it wasn't for the video editing I would have gotten the solid state memory and backed up on SDHC cards.
I'll post a review of this computer once I use it more
Here is a post I copied from another touring cyclist:
We opted for a Twinhead laptop which has a padded harddrive and is said to survive repeated drops of 3 feet onto concrete (with cover closed). We added an extended life battery.
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