BootsnAll Travel Community

So, my husband and I were engaged in theserious debate that many booties have been contemplating...to laptop or not to laptop on the road. Well, for those of you on fence, we just purchased the best invention, the cloudbook, by Everex:

www.everex.com/

IT is super cheap for a computer (400 bucks), has wifi, a card reader, using the linux system (not mac or windows so all programs and downloads are free with minimal threat of virus), and is the tiniest little thing (about 8 inchs by 5 inches closed up). IT works very well and is brand new. we got ours half way through our trip and are so in love with it.

Has anyone else used it? What do you think?

I have no experience with them, looks nice though. One of my frinds in on the market for a cool travel laptop. He is a heavy gamer and he had found one refurbished MacBook looks nice with Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB, 120GB, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

Typical, isn't it? After years of waiting for cheap, ultra-mobile subnotebooks, 3+ come along at once

I went with the Asus EeePC, but I didn't know about the Everex. Both seem to be great devices (what matters most for me aside from the software/OS is size and weight).

I have a MacBook Pro and it's great. It's perfect. I've only used someone else's everex, so i didn't get a huge amount of time to play with it, but it didnt seem to be very good. and only had a 30 gb hard drive. i have more than 30gb of music. Let alone storing my photos and videos on there...

Sounds like a good travel machine. I got a MacBook, which is pretty compact for a full-featured machine. It's been nice for photo and video editing for out website, too (which would be difficult on one of those little machines)

But, if you aren't editing photos, something like the Everex or Eee PC with a detachable harddrive would be great.

Oh yeah- the laptop has been SOOO nice on our trip. It is a pain to drag around, but we've been very happy to have it with us.

Check out our travel blog
www.adamandshawn.com

Yeah exactly. Im not on my RTW yet, but i cart my MBP around locally quite a bit and it's a little heavy, but it's easily bearable. I don't even notice it unless ive got all my school books, text books, food and 1.5Litres of water in my bag (which weighs a LOT)...

The Asus Eee is supposed to be a great ultra-mobile laptop. It's smaller than the Everex Cloudbook, has better Wi-Fi, and the same battery life (Everex apparently overestimated the Cloudbook battery life), and has that intangible "coolness" factor. On the downside, Eee has only 4 or 8 GB memory (but it's solid state so will take abuse MUCH better) and is expandable by 16 GB with SD or MMC cards. Cloudbook has a standard 30GB harddrive. Here's a head to head comparison:
http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/gadgetell-compari...book-vs-asus-eee-pc/ http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/gadgetell-compari...book-vs-asus-eee-pc/

Both are a great value at $400, but don't expect to do any hardcore gaming or database programming. This is strictly a fit-in-a-large-pocket ultra-mobile for surfing the internet, transferring digital pictures from your camera, word processing, and basic computing stuff. Enjoy!

-Dave

I just ordered a Nokia N810 Internet tablet. It's in no way a laptop replacement but I think it'll be a good gadget for short trips where I don't really need the processing power. It should get me online for the quick information lookup, online chats and webmail. It should arrive on Friday and I'll take it on my trip to NYC next week to see how well it works for me.

Let's not forget that the Eee is coming out in a 9" variety with 12GB!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/7-inch-eee-pc-vs-9-inch-eee-pc-ready-fight/

My husband just got a MacBook Air for work (no way would we shell out that much for our home laptop), and he is in love with the machine. He says it's like getting a BMW after driving a Chevy for many years. We took it to Puerto Rico with us last week and it weighs so little that we didn't even feel the difference in weight in our packs, and it seemed to pick up wifi signals better than a lot of the other computers in the places we were staying. He's thinking about asking to buy it from his work when we go on our RTW but it seems like an easy target for thieves.

quote:

Originally posted by Pete Teoh:
I just ordered a Nokia N810 Internet tablet. It's in no way a laptop replacement but I think it'll be a good gadget for short trips where I don't really need the processing power. It should get me online for the quick information lookup, online chats and webmail. It should arrive on Friday and I'll take it on my trip to NYC next week to see how well it works for me.

So, what is the verdict?
Did you like it?

quote:

Originally posted by benrules:
Let's not forget that the Eee is coming out in a 9" variety with 12GB!

And here it is. 12Gb with WinXP (why would you on a machine like this?) or 20Gb with Linux for the same price. The improvements on this model suggest that when they get around to putting the Intel Atom chip in it, they'll have sorted the battery life a bit too. Very cool.

quote:

Originally posted by BostonBill:

quote:

Originally posted by Pete Teoh:
I just ordered a Nokia N810 Internet tablet. It's in no way a laptop replacement but I think it'll be a good gadget for short trips where I don't really need the processing power. It should get me online for the quick information lookup, online chats and webmail. It should arrive on Friday and I'll take it on my trip to NYC next week to see how well it works for me.

So, what is the verdict?
Did you like it?

I like it. The N810 is a little underpowered and can sometimes be slow to render complicated web pages. However, for the convenience of a pocket-sized device it works quite well. The web browser is based on an early version of Firefox 3 and renders just about any web page you throw at it. It even has a flash plugin and works with the BnA chat should you want to chat with other Booties on the road.

It has a built-in SIP client so I can connect to my Voice-over-IP account to make phone calls. There's also a Skype client so you can make phone calls that way too.

I got an 8GB memory card for it and ripped some movies from DVD to the card. The high res screen is great to watch movies on.

I installed a VPN client so I can remotely connect to my home network. Rdesktop and VNC allow me to remotely control my PCs at home so I can run applications that way for anything that won't run natively on the N810.

Connectivity is through WiFi or Bluetooth (using a Bluetooth cell phone as an internet gateway). Battery life is good. I consistently get about 5-6 hours on a single charge. Overall, I like the N810. For the $330 that I paid, it's hard to beat.

Thanks Pete. That looks like a great price. I have seen mostly $399.

quote:

Originally posted by BostonBill:
Thanks Pete. That looks like a great price. I have seen mostly $399.

Yeah, I lucked out. Nokiausa.com reduced the price to $389 for just a couple of days and I also had a coupon code for 15% off which took the price down to $330 with free shipping. It's definitely nowhere near a full computer and can be a tad slow at times but well worth the price.

I have the EEE PC from Asus..I really like it, despite the lack of any significant hard drive. I plan on getting a Western Digital passport external 320GB drive anyhow.

Anyhow, the EEE PC is small enough to put in a small backpack and go. It's light and it's cheap...so while it would suck if it got stolen...I wouldn't be out too much


I'm going to have to write an article on security on these type devices though. The security of the data stored on these type devices is probably a bigger issue than the physical security of the devices themselves.

I don't need this right now!!! 2 weeks before I leave and my computer is on life support.

seriously thinking of going to the apple store tomorrow and walking out with a MacBook.

Still unsure though whether its a good idea to take a new laptop on the road...but I want one. With my camera, lenses and laptop my day pack will be 10lbs easy. Yikes.

Humm..decisions decisions.

Does anyone use the MSI Wind? And if so--what did you think of it. Any issues? How does it 'feel'? I don't plan to toss it down a cliff but I want to make sure it's sturdy.

Thanks!

It looks like the MSI wind is released:
http://msiwind.net/

Review:
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39030093,49297130,00.htm

Weighing in at 2.9 lbs (and pricing at 550 US dollars), it goes head-to-head with Macbook Air:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39029450,49297991-1,00.htm

All in all, it seems like a sweet little computer

I've had the Asus eee 901 for a month now. I'm consistently getting 6 hours of battery life out of it. Overpriced at $600, but oh well. It manages workable performance with photoshop, which is saying something.

I'm pretty sure the MSI wind has comparable performance, although some versions have a smaller battery and thus shorter battery life.