Hi:

I'm looking for a laptop to take on my next extended trip. I recently started using a Mac desktop after many years on Windows. I love the Mac and was thinking that would be the natural choice for a laptop. But, I'm just curious if there are any drawbacks to having a Mac vs Windows laptop on the road? Has anyone who traveled with a Mac in the developing world ever had problems connecting to a network, etc? Any other issues I should be aware of? I like the Mac, but don't want to haul 5 lbs of dead weight with me if I'm going to hyave troubles with it on the road.

Thanks for any advice you can lend.

Pelke

I love my Mac, but I take a Windows netbook when I travel. The netbook is much smaller than even the MacBook Air. Plus, netbooks are much cheaper, so I don't feel paranoid about taking it with me on trips, or leaving it in my pack in a room.

I also take a little portable hard drive, which I use for backups every couple of days. I keep the portable drive on my all the time, so if someone _does_ take the netbook I'm only out the $350, not all of my photos and data.

- Mike

What are you using the laptop for? A netbook will be extremely lightweight, but it may also be underpowered.

With an offhand guess at your needs (basic wordprocessing? web browsing? email?), I'd say it really doesn't matter what hardware you bring. Macs and Windows should have little to no difference as far as network connectivity goes, beyond the power of the included hardware. If you were using Linux, depending on the flavor and distro, and your hardware, that might be an issue, but for Mac vs. Windows, negligible.

I'd say the biggest concern would be theft. Let's face it, Macs have a certain appeal and retain their value longer. My beat-up Dell covered in stickers and with the bezel coming loose probably won't be nearly as inviting as a older, but still solid, white or silver Macbook, especially to our less honest fellow travelers. But you could always uglify it, or get that hilarious laptop sleeve that looks like a pile of newspapers.

If you'll be somewhere with any public access to computers, be it internet cafes or libraries, you could easily get away with just bringing a USB flash drive. In addition to carrying around all your passwords with a program like Roboform, you can install any number of software suites such as Liberkey and PortableApps. That'll put your office suite, email, web browser, image editors, etc. all at the tip of your fingers, literally (if you're holding your keychain, that is.)

So that said, I'd say after potential for theft, the next biggest issue is weight.

My suggestion would be to buy an older, small Thinkpad for cheap. They're built like tanks, pretty low-key, and lightweight.

Plus, any money you spend on a new Mac of any type, like the lightweight Air, will be an extra 1-2 months' budget you could be using traveling, and how much time do you want to spend on your laptop, anyway?

For example: you can get a Thinkpad x40 or x41 on eBay for under $300, easy. For that you'll get a 12" laptop that's more functional than a traditional netbook, that weighs less than 3 pounds, and that if it gets stolen, won't break the bank on you (and you're backing up your files, right? With something like Dropbox or another syncing service?) It's not a processing powerhouse by today's standards, but even though I keep buying a new computer every 2-3 years, there's very few tasks I use my Macbook Pro for that I couldn't have achieved on my old Toshiba Satellite.

A Linux distro like Ubuntu will be very zippy on older hardware, but sometimes there are compatibility problems, so if you're not technically apt, or willing to put in the hours Googling issues, I'd avoid it. Windows XP should do you just fine, if you're careful not to install too much crapware.

It's not always possible to do an online backup, since many places have really slow connections. Uploading 3 or 4 Gigs of pictures is going to take forever most places I've stayed. Online backups are nice for text files, or for a small number of pictures, but for bulk storage I bring a small portable hard drive.

- Mike

mikeym wrote:It's not always possible to do an online backup, since many places have really slow connections. Uploading 3 or 4 Gigs of pictures is going to take forever most places I've stayed. Online backups are nice for text files, or for a small number of pictures, but for bulk storage I bring a small portable hard drive.

- Mike

Perhaps I'm unusual, but I rarely take 3-4 gigs of photographs in a single week, or even month. That's a lot of photos! Since he mentioned connecting to the network, and he's bringing a laptop to begin with, I think even semi-regular syncing over a slow connection (unless you're in South Africa. Then a carrier pigeon might be the way to go) with a day or two's worth of anything is probably going to be easy to handle.

Still, you're right, there's no harm in a USB flash drive or hard drive as well. The more, the better. Like one of the USB flash Survivor drives, or one of the Lacie Rugged external drives. I just like syncing services because it's automatic, and no matter what happens to your physical gear, in most scenarios short of the apocalypse, your data will be safe.

However, the original question was more oriented towards bringing a laptop, and I stand by suggesting either bringing only a USB drive or investing in an older Thinkpad.

Hi Everyone:

Thanks for the advice so far. I appreciate it. To answer the question on what applications I want to run -- I plan to maintain a detailed blog while on the road. On my last trip, I tried doing this using internet cafes and that just didn't work for me. I found it quite difficult to concentrate on writing, or even processing pictures, in that setting. It was fine for checking and sending quick e-mails, but anything beyond that became a chore, so I slowly stopped updating the blog.

This time, I'm thinking of taking a laptop or netbook so I can do my writing and photo processing offline at my own pace and with familiar tools. I'll just be using the cafes to upload my stuff and, as Scritch suggested, to back-up my pictures online (I have an Apple MobileMe account, so can dump all my pictures there). I do like the idea of bringing a small external drive to use for interim back-ups, as well.

On the point about having the laptop stolen or lost -- I agree with you guys that I'd be more comfortable with a lower end model so it won't hurt so bad if it happens. But, at the same time, I am hesitant to loose some of the Mac applications that I really like, such as iPhoto/Aperture for pictures and iMovie for videos. There are also some nice "offline blogging" tools for the Mac, but I suppose I could find equivalents for Windows.

I asked the question about connectivity for the Mac in developing countries because I had talked with one person who said they had quite a difficult time connecting theirs while in Africa (Uganda/Rwanda). Just curious if anyone else has used a Mac on the road and run into similar problems.

Thanks again for your suggestions so far!

Pelke

Ahhh, that makes sense. I'm computer-savvy, nowhere near a techno-wizard, but I think those incompatibilities have more to do with specific hardware/drivers and older routers/access points. With the newer machines, and newer drivers, it shouldn't be much of a problem. When you're running Linux, that becomes an issue due to hardware support, but most manufacturers like Linksys want their stuff to work with the big guys like Apple and Microsoft. Did your friends recently have trouble? Within the past year or so? It makes sense, but it never occurred to me to worry about older hardware being run in some countries. It's also the type of problem that could happen if you had a PC, too. Some older wifi cards can't connect to newer WPA encryption, for example.

Your question gave me the eBay bug, and if you watch closely, you can see an even newer model of the Thinkpad, the x60 and x61, going for under $300, and those have Core Duo processors. Short of heavy photo/video editing, I'm not sure there are any blogging/writing/photo needs that can't be met with a Core Duo.

If you're considering a netbook, I'd encourage you to actually try one out at a store. The portability appeals to me, but I don't have very large hands and even on the largest netbooks with "nearly"-full-sized keyboards I find my fingers striking more than one key at a time. Which makes touch typing impossible and even hunt-and-peck a chore. For others, they may be just the right size.

If you have access to a Windows machine, I'd recommend trying out the Windows Live suite of applications. While Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker aren't in the same league as their comparable Apple products, they are quite functional, and pack in a lot of the features that the average user might need. Personally, I enjoy Photo Gallery more than Picasa at this point. And for blogging tools, try out Windows Live Writer. Google a couple of reviews on the Windows Live applications, they're mostly positive, believe it or not.

You might also check out Alternativeto.net. You type in the application you're looking for and it offers, well, alternatives.