How about everybodys thoughts on bringing a laptop?
Rebecca & Bennett
Light weight laptop
system
#3
Dell has a titanium model. One of those utra thin ultra light…ultra $$. One guy we hiked with had a Palm and a snap on folding keyboard to do his journals and also his work at the same time, then send them on his CELL. Tough hiking and working at the same time. We had fun.
Bushwhack
system
#4
Bring it for what reason? Mail? Even the smallest laptop, with power supply weighs in at close to 4 pounds. Battery life is limted to about 3 - 4 hours. If all you’re thinking about is doing email, why tote all that weight and size? Grab a pocketmail. It weighs under a pound, will do email fine, and the battery life is 30 - 45 days on a single set of AA batteries.
Moose
system
#5
try a psion 5mx or something if you want the full kit-n-kaboodles of a real machine… or there is pocketmail and its subscription fees and such.
the psion is a palmtop with full keyboard, full os, etc. runs on a couple of aa’s.
Bloody Cactus
system
#6
I guess right now the only thing holding us back from not going with something small like the pocketmail is because we are bring our digital camera to take pictures with, and unless we can upload them into something it will only hold like 19-25 pictures. 5-7 months is a long time to go through and only be able to take that many pictures. Any suggestions anyone?!?! :nerd
Rebecca & Bennett
system
#7
Buy a couple of the large memory cards for your camera. Use one, when it starts to get full, swap it with the other. Ship off the full one and either have them developed or downloaded. Have them send back the blank one to you.
Read one of your previous notes about how many of us are “anti-technology”. While you will find those who are very strident about this, I don’t think the majority of us are. Me… hell I’m a geek in the biggest sense of the word. I love these kinds of toys, I work with computers for a living. However, most of us have found they just are necessary and really equate to extra pounds that aren’t needed. In fact, the only reason I’m even using a pocketmail on this trip is to help out my transcriber. My wife transcribed for me in 2001 and even SHE had a hard time reading my chicken scratch. The pocketmail is to help make her transcribing job easier. If you want to bring, cell phone, computer, GPS, pagers…hey it’s your hike and you weight. As long as you don’t allow those devices to detract from or disturb someone else’s hike, carry whatever you like. However, I think after some miles you’ll find the “toys” will go home because you just don’t need or use them.
Moose
system
#8
You may want to look into a hand-held PC. They are more expensive then Pocketmail, but I have one that I use that has a built in modem and a PCMCIA slot where I can insert my digital camera card. The one that I have runs on a windows CE operating system and has lightweight versions of most windows programs. If you look into a hand-held PC don’t get the color version if you want to conserve on battery power.
Leif