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Best Laptop for Going Around the World?
mitbeaver writes "I'm planning a round-the-world trip. 6+ months in developing countries, including Everest base camps 1 & 2, the deserts of Namibia and lots of places in between. I want to bring something to write (blogs or the Great American Novel) and burn DVD photo backups to mail home. I don't really need much in the way of power, but I do need it to survive the altitude, dust, moisture of tropical locations, and being hauled around non-stop for the better part of a year. I will be carrying my life in my backpack, so every pound counts. It looks like some 'semi-rugged' ultraportables exist, but the truly 'rugged' are all pretty heavy. These are pricey, and the risk of theft is non trivial. A smaller laptop is easier to keep on my person more often, which is safer (in most countries) than leaving it in the hostel/hotel. Still, the rugged guys are 2x the price — almost worth buying a cheap one and planning an on the road replacement purchase. I know we've talked about gadgets to carry around the world before, but any advice would be greatly appreciated." We also discussed laptop travel cases a little more than a year ago.
You will want to use a solid state disk when you are at Everest base camp.
If you read about computers used there, the hard drives fail very quickly due to low air pressure.
Hard drives are not rated to work at 18,000 feet.
It's not just what laptop to bring, but what to carry it in so that you don't look like a rich guy carrying a laptop. I suggest something extremely light, and underpowered, and small. OLPC jumps to mind immediately. But the key is nobody knowing you have it, so that it doesn't a. get you jumped, and b. walk off in the night or when you leave it in your apartment/hotel room/tent, or what have you.
Don't get a laptop bag. Wrap it in a shirt or something and put it in a canvas backpack. If the machine doesn't look like it'll take that abuse, you're asking for trouble on one front or another.
Whatever you get, immediately try to make it look like crap.
I chose the wrong bag when I was in Madagascar, and KNEW it after about a day or so, there. I did pick the right laptop, though -- a cheapo dell. I put stuff on usb memory sticks, so that my data was always both on the laptop and in my room.
Forget the DVD burner.
I agree the EEEpc is by far the cheapest and most portable solution. You can buy a bigger SSD drive to stick in an EEEPC to survive riding in a jeep in Africa/Mt Everest etc., buy a bunch of 4-8-16 GB SDHC cards for additional storage/redundancy, and do offline backups when you have internet access (which you'll have if you're blogging).
Personally, I have a pimped out toshiba subnotebook that I upgraded to an SSD. I can get 10 hours of battery life.