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Communications Connecting - internet cafes, laptops, smart phones - how to connect, use, which one, and intercom/radio systems.
Photo by Lois Pryce, schoolkids in Algeria

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  #1  
Old 10 Nov 2009
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Laptop choice
Like many people I want to access the internet whilst on the road (blogs, e mails, etc) Can anyone recommend a small, robust laptop (oh, and cheap too!)
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Just use internet cafes, cheap and plenty about. Plus saves lugging around all that extra weight, carrying adapters etc. The only place I found few internet cafes was N America as its mostly wi-fi however there are places if you look. 3rd world countries have shed-loads of internet cafes and are dirt cheap.
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Eee PCs
I am a big fan of the ASUS Eee PC range. They are really small and light.

I took 701 model with a cigarette adapter to charge it on the road on a recent trip. It went in the tank bag with all the other electrical items. Maybe a bigger battery or second would help too.

You can get quite a few diff models too. All pretty cheap.

What you are looking for is called a "Netbook" not a notebook or laptop. they are smaller and not as full featured as the other two.

Cheers
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Laptop choice
+1 for the Eee Pc. We've bought the Eee PC 1000 HE after much research. It would seem to be the benchmark at the moment; only 10 inches wide, with an almost standard sized key board and a real world 10 hour battery life. Apparent works well with Windows 7 if that's your cup of tea.

Just incase you're wondering the other we were considering was the Samsung NC-10.

I know people talk about using internet cafes but we want the freedom to carry additional software (maps etc), and carry our photos.
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Don't forget you can always get a small portable USB hard drive to back up photos to and then burn to dvd & send home or have software on etc. All your important documents should be scanned and emailed to your own Hotmail (or whatever) a/c.

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Originally Posted by Bobduro View Post
I know people talk about using internet cafes but we want the freedom to carry additional software (maps etc), and carry our photos.
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Don't forget you can always get a small portable USB hard drive to back up photos to and then burn to dvd & send home or have software on etc. All your important documents should be scanned and emailed to your own Hotmail (or whatever) a/c.
That's a very good point about having the scanned docs on your hotmail, gmail or some sort of web accessible resource.

On the USB drive note, I copied all my photos to a nice new 500gb USB Hard Disk. Unfortunately it failed half way through the trip. Luckily I am a paranoid type and didn't delete them from the cards.

I say do all three. Upload at least the important docs, copy photos to an external drive and carry lots of memory cards.
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Old 10 Nov 2009
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Everyone draws the line somewhere. I have no GPS, but I carry a netbook and will no longer leave home without it. I journal, back photos, compose, do paperwork of various sorts which should have been completed before I left home, store documents and scans.....

Yeah, I could do all this in internet cafes and photo shops. But I like doing it over dinner, a , or in my lodging. I like sharing photos full-sized with people I meet. And lots of places have wi-fi--not just North America. I find wireless access far more convenient than internet cafes, even at their best and most plentiful.

I use a slightly-antiquated EEE PC (i.e., a year and a half old). I have no tolerance for Windows, so mine has Linux. That means no viruses, and no hard drive either--it functions fine on a pure solid state drive, which means no moving parts to foul up as I bounce from tope to tope and slosh through rough tracks here and there. These things now cost under US$200, which is less than half the cost of the GPS I left at home. Mine weighs an even kilogram, just like a good book.

Hope that helps.

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Old 10 Nov 2009
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+1 for the EEEPC range, I'm now using a 1005 HA, which is fantastic and running very well on Windows 7. It's got 160gb of hard-drive, and ASUS have cleverly put the system back up ON the hard-drive so if everything goes wrong you just hold F9 down as you boot the computer and it will do a factory reset.

The hard-drive is partitioned into C and D, the best thing is to store all your data on D, leaving C for Windows and your installed programs. Factory reset only affects the C drive, so this way you can get your computing back from a catastrophe in about 30 minutes.

Another option worth considering is something like Portable Apps Suite. The idea is that you can put all the programs you need on a portable drive like a USB memory stick or SD card, plug that into ANY windows computer and you can use those programs directly from the memory stick with no installation at all.

With my EEEPC I've gone one stage further, partioned my hard-drive into C, D and E. Windows is on C, all the data is on D, and Portable Apps on E. Touch wood if I ever factory reset, I'll be up and running again in about five minutes.
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