Thread: Travelling with Laptop

John,

It depends where you are going. In North America, the UK and a lots of Europe it's no problem finding free wireless internet.

It's also not much of a problem finding Internet Cafes that will let you plug in.

Paying for internet just about anywhere is cheaper than here, if you don't log onto the hotel $20 per hour stuff, but if you poke around you'll find heaps for free.

In Asia, internet cafes are so cheap you'd think they were free anyway. Go to the places the locals use, usually around the corner from the main street.

Make sure if you are doing banking, you have your passwords encrypted!

If you have an Optus, Virgin, or Telstra mobile broadband account, you can roam with those, but they are a lot per hour/kB as well when you are roaming offshore.

On the other hand you have to weigh up just how badly you need to be in touch. When I travel with the laptop, it's to work, or download photos. I backup to a separate hard drive EVERY night, and keep it separately, either in a separate bag, or wherever the laptop isn't. If the laptop's with me, it's in my room, and vice versa.

Personally, I'm over the constant contact thing. I MAY log in weekly or so, but certainly not enough to justify carrying a machine just for that purpose.

Cheers,

P

I carry a laptop just about everywhere I go for work. Overseas I have tried all manner of contact and like BM reckon the internet cafe route is one of the best ways to go. You don't have to wait for a machine if they are busy and often you can find free connections.

I also don't use a webmail client so I download all my email to my laptop and then go somewhere more relaxed or comfortable and construct my considered replies then go back next day and send etc. If you do this it helps to have a VPN connection so you can send mail via that since many networks block direct sending of mail .

Thanks BM & BobL, for those pointers I was'nt aware of the plug ins allowed in some internet cafes so that is good to know.

Going to be Canada & the States for 6 months so am thinking WIFI from a roaming RV.

Cheers John

For six months, take the laptop!

In the States at least, you'll get plenty of free WIFI, and I imagine in the RV community it won't take too long to get the lowdown.

Don't forget to buy a portable hardrive, and see my notes above!

It'd be a shame to lose your photos and all your contacts four and a half months into a trip like that!

Cheers,

P

just NEVER allow your laptop to be stuck in the hold with your other baggage. A little known fact of air travel is that NONE of the contents are covered in any way .... just the bags.

I SO wish I didn't know this....

Seriph1,

You mean covered by the airlines, yes?

Anytime I have checked obviously valuable items into the hold, I have been asked to sign a disclaimer that I accept the risk of loss of the item.

You may find that your house contents insurance covers loss or damage to your laptop while in the hold. If not, insurance is available from the airlines or your insurance agent.

woodbe.

Yes I mean that - and your advice is sound, unless you're prevented from taking the item on board with you, during pre-boarding....then it is difficult to prepare for. I just thought to alert folks to the fact that the airlines cannot be held liable, even when through their own action or inaction, your stuff gets damaged or lost.

Having worked with an airlines company in a past life, I'll second the call NEVER to check in your laptop or anything valuable. Don't assume baggage handlers can't know the contents of your bags, and that there are no airport staff who are not involved in unsavoury activities, or that security is tight enough to stop them getting away with it.

Also, it depends what you actually want to do with it.

One option is to take one of those Asus Eee-PC laptops. They're quite cheap ($500), light and small, but not a lot of storage, so if you just want to do light web browsing and email, they'd be fine, but if you are taking a gazillion photos and want to store them, or write a book, not so useful.

woodbe.

Originally Posted by woodbe

One option is to take one of those Asus Eee-PC laptops. They're quite cheap ($500), light and small, but not a lot of storage, so if you just want to do light web browsing and email, they'd be fine, but if you are taking a gazillion photos and want to store them, or write a book, not so useful.

woodbe.

I've been looking at the Eee-PC. We will be traveling for a month later in the year by public transport around Spain and Portugal. It depends on luggage space but I suspect a fullsize laptop would be more suitable for 6 months in an RV. There are cheapies going for the same price as an Eee.

My take on the Eee is that it's OK for email and photo storage because you can plug in cheap usb memory sticks, or if you really go berserk you can add a usb external drive. My concern is the screen resolution will be too small for convenient web browsing.

The Eee's size is very appealing. fits easily into a smallish size shoulder bag and not much weight. I didn't find the keyboard too small, but maybe that's because I am used to a small electronic organizer.

Well I bought an eee and have no hesitation in saying I'm happy.

I was originally worried the 800x480 screen resoution would be too low, however after playing with it I don't think it will be a big issue as a travel accessory. I've loaded Opera as an alternate browser to helphandle large pages that firefox has troublewith, however it hasn't been a real issue so far.

My major concern at the moment is the lack of ipchains support in the shipped OS. There are fixes available but they require a bit of hacking to install.

Fuzzie,

Why do you want ipchains?

woodbe

I, too, have a EEE pc and just love it. Easy to use, lightweight, perfect for keeping an eye on the forum while watching tv. Great for travelling as it fits into an A5 pencil case and no one would know that there's a little pc in it.

cheers
Wendy

Originally Posted by woodbe

Fuzzie,

Why do you want ipchains?

woodbe

ipchains is a firewall for linux. Since the eeePC doesn't have a lot of services running in it's default setup, there is some discussion about whether or not a firewall is really necessary, ASUS obviously decided it wasn't.

However I've been installing extra applications and tweaking the user interface and I'll be using it on public networks. I just like the idea of having the firewall up and running, just in case.......

The problem with installing the ipchains fix appears to be that you would need to blow away the shipped recovery partition. Having only had it for a few days I'm not sure I want to do that yet and I don't think I have enough time before I travel to play around with other OS installations.