Hey Bill,

Well with the mac you wont be limited to 8gb of memory (flash memory is now faster than standard HDs - it's also being made in chunks of 20gb+)... and actually having no windows is a bad thing!?!?!?! :innocent:

Having said that of course macs will quite happily run windows as it will Mac OS X as well as BSD or another linux variant. Why take one OS on the road when you can take three?

The thinkpad is a really nice machine - no question. But having already trashed 2 hard drives on the road my next laptop is going to have to have flash memory.

Plus it'll come with all of those modern gooddies like USB 2 which will make the transfer of photographs significantly easier and faster, not to mention 802.11b/g so faster connections to the network when I do hit somewhere that needs it - mainly at home when I'm pushing the large photo files around.

But it's very much horses for courses with these things. I don't need massive HD because I drop my photos off in 4gb chunks and post them home - once I know they've arrived safe I drop them off the laptop - the last thing I want is to have the kit nicked or for it to break with ALL my shots from the trip on - so a massive HD is overkill for me.

For example on my last trip I had one of the first Samsung Q1 Ultra Portables with a 10gb HD and at no point did I come close to filling it. It's not my main laptop - it's my kit for the road.

Then the rest of the HD is just taken up with my silly scribbles about 'life on the road' and how tough it is :mchappy: which, as it's text and uploaded to the blog all the time hardly takes any room up at all.

I'm not one of these people that takes films (movies) with them (what's the point!?) but I do like to have space to download useful doc / pdfs if and when I need them.

The nice thing about flash memory is how easy it is to upgrade / add to. If I need more space for something specific I just plug in an 32gb SD card (£120 from play.com) and I've instantly got more space. Or just a cheap £15 8gb jobbie from play.com.

I carry an iPod too of course and if I really need the space that has 160gb (40 taken up with my music) - but even though I love my iPod I still don't trust that it wont die on the road so wont put anything essential on there.

Now I think I'm rambled on enough and I should leave you to your breakfast!

m

Hi Matt,
160 gig of external HD space in your I pod.
Dude that isn't flash memory.
You are spinning a disk....
Well no matter.
I like having my tunes and pics all in one place with everything backed up separately just in case.
I bought a 2 year IBM service warranty so I have about $740 in equipment(including the external HD) and warranty plus $25 for a case.
There is no DVD player with my system if I don't carry the detachable base(I won't).
I can run an SD card in addition to the other memories.
Battery life for me is about 6 hours in the real world if I keep the screen brightness down.

I am sure this is going to be an ongoing discussion, and a good one at that.
Something I look forward to.
bill.

Horses for courses....
 

You're quite right Bill the iPod is a spinning disk... hence....

" but even though I love my iPod I still don't trust that it wont die on the road so wont put anything essential on there."

But everyone has different needs and I don't think there's one system out there that will work for everyone... so... at home I have...

A HP Laptop - it's nice enough, bought it from John Lewis - all the bells and whistles, massive HD plus an external HD for backup, and a massive 30 inch monitor. That works at home because my wife is a journalist and needs access to her most loved of audio editing applications Audition, and all I need is fast access to email and t'internet

Work - well I have an all singing all dancing MacBook Pro - maxxed out RAM, external HD for backup and a stunning array of plug in accessories and monitors.

On the road... well that's the golden question for this thread isn't it.

For my needs it has to be flash based, doesn't need a massive capacity, but must be able to connect to anything that is thrown at it and be able to quickly download images / other files to SD cards for posting home and backup to the main computer. It must also 'just work' - I have the laptop because I like to record my journey and blog about it - but I'm not spending an hour in an internet cafe trying to get it to connect to the wi-fi or trying to work out why it wont recognise my memory card - I left that behind when I ditched Windows ;-) With a decent linux instal or preferably a Mac OS X install I get to spend more time on the road enjoying the travelling than messing with my tech.

I have my tunes on the iPod away from the main computer because frankly if my iPod fails it's not the end of the world - but if the laptop fails... it could be a bigger problem for me - but that's what you get when you rely so bloody much on technology! I need to go back to pen and paper I think :eek3:

So to summarise - at home and work all singing all dancing - on the road - as simple as possible to reduce the risk of something breaking.

Hi Matt,
I completely understand your philosophy and support it.
We will see how my Thinkpad holds up on the road.
I want one machine that does it all and I am a computer noob to be sure.
I work as a night nurse and then hit the road...only one computer for me.
I travel as an RN and as a motorcyclist.

The little Think Pad caught my eye and when I tried it the quality feel sucked me in.
If it was a motorcycle it would be a thumper,
High power, low weight...just like my 2002 KTM 640 Adventure.
Good used equipment.
It all comes back to motorcycles and women and politics and religion...our choices are who we are.
Here's a review that isn't too computereze(two pages).

IBM ThinkPad X40 Review

bill.

The ThinkPad is certainly a very solid machine - I'm sure it'll suit you down to the ground!

I trained as a nurse btw... did my common foundation programme before leaving for the heady heights of other work :-)

m

Hi
I was going to buy one of these mainly for Mapsource and saving gps tracks.Is this possible??I have heard windows xp needs to be installed.How much would this cost and is it straight forward?:confused1:
Thanks

Actually, Bill I must correct you...if the Thinkpad was a motorcycle, it would be a K75...;) Those K75s(like their owners) are very insensitive!

Unlike desktops, design and component quality is key in laptops...specifically their HD's which are the most prone to failure...
Thinkpads use Hitachi travelstar HD's as their OEM, and those are proven workhorses...
Until, laptops switch to significant size solid state hard drive in the future, picking one with a quality HD(at a reasonable cost) will drive my decision...

l refuse to get caught up in the speed, size, cc crap...I need something that will work when i turn it on every time...that's why I choose the K and the Thinkpad...and so does NASA...standard on the Space Station and all space shuttle flights.

You can install windows on the Asus eee PC - Asus provide all the drivers you need and you can buy a 'cut down' version of windows for it from microsoft - all in all that eats up about 2gb of your 4gb hard drive - but if capacity isn't a huge thing for you (storing your maps on sd cards for example) then that's not a problem :-)

There's a guide to stuff over on the reg

Eee PC: better with Windows? | Reg Hardware

hope that helps :-)

m

Very solid little machines - interesting article about the NASA stuff over at

2001: A Space Laptop | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

if you're interested.

m

Thanks for the reply.I'll look into it.Cheers

I'm just playing with my new ASUS EeePC. Here's a pic of it online.
http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/b...h/DSCF1027.jpg

If this has worked I've taken a pic from my camera, uploaded it to photobucket and posted it. Job done.

It seems like a good bit of kit. I just have to remember that I've got very little spare memory and use my 250GB external drive.

I dont understand why people arnt buying the one from overseas which has (if im correct in thinking it does), 8gb HDD and 1gb RAM !

They are on EBAY !

nice one dude - they're really really cool and if Apple don't come up with the goods early next year then the Asus is the only way to go... and yes Ted... I'll be buying it from over-seas!!!

m

I'd love an EeePC and would prefer Windows so I'm wondering wouldn't it be possible to put an older version of Windows on it? I'm still happily running Win2000 on my PC of a 512Mb HD with a 160Gb slave for everything else.

So, I'm thinking couldn't I just pop Win2000 on the Asus?

I don't see why not - the Asus does ship with a CD that contains all the windows drivers for the hardware, but I know that's aimed at XP so you may need to do some digging to get to the stuff for 2000.

Of course if you're going to slap that memory hungry OS on it you may want to upgrade the RAM to as much as you can squeeze in there.

m