Laptops and Travelling

[steveR]

I have an Advent 4211 running XP that has appeared pretty robust with some less then tender treatment from children.. But, not a SSD which seems a must for your needs.

12 months old, it is a battery hungry little devil, but will charge/run from a 12v DC source using an adapter which saves toting a brick power supply if space was an issue. SSD should give better battery life I am told.

[Dee Duble Yuh]

While a hard-disk netbook can take some bumping around, a solid-state device gives you better peace of mind when on rough roads; battery life should be better too.

I wonder if a solar panel charger would be useful for extended journies? These look interesting. Only the first appears to charge netbooks but it's EXPENSIVE!
Solargorilla

The Freeloader will definitely power smart-phones and PDAs, not sure about netbooks:
Freeloader Solar Charger
FreeLoader Solar Charger - buy at Firebox.com

If you have a charger that fits a 12v cigar-lighter socket, keep the bike's battery topped up with something like this:
Solar Powered Battery Charger (1.5W)
4.8W Solar Battery Charger
But that means wires everywhere.

Just thoughts.

[sparklymarkly]

I've bought an eee PC 901 like Tendays with a solid state hard drive specifically for a planned rtw trip. Having used it at home I just love it - great battery life, light, doesn't burn your lap, quick boot-up. Mine was just £165 new as well!

Highly recommended.

BB

Where did you get yours for £165? Sounds good.....

[Rubberchicken]

Acer Aspire One seems to be the cheapest bit of kit around in netbooks. At least if you get the bottom-spec one, which is 512M memory and an 8 gig SSD. It's slow, it's not up to regular notebook use, but it's good enough on the road as a portable browser.

I've fitted mine with a big-arse battery, 8 hours runtime.

[angelo]

Have a look at this - not the most powerful but looks small and simple AND has mobile phone sim inside when you cannot get wi fi

www.dabs.com/products/datawind-ubisurfer-68H2.html

I dont have one but am thinking of it.

[DRLANER]

I use a Sony Vaio VGN TX1-XP it is a fully eqiupped laptop with a DVD writer, 1GB of ram, wireless and bluetooth, memory card reader (ideal to just pop the memory card out of your camera and into the laptop!) solid state HDD and 11.1" screen which can be seen in sunlight, it runs Vista perfectly!

Battery life ranges from 3 to 5 hours depending on how you use it!
When fully packed away with Power inverter for charging on the bike, it takes up just half of one pannier!

You can get them quite cheap on the bay of e!

EEE pc's are good, but I find them lacking in the features department!

[Dee Duble Yuh]

There is also this:
Dell Adamo XPS - Fresh new gadgets

128 GB solid-state drive...

[Rubberchicken]

Dell Adamo XPS - Fresh new gadgets

That is a serious contender to take the "form over function" award from the airbook... I can see a lot of things wrong with that, without even trying.

[RodYork]

wow- where did you get it at £165.00!!

I was reading that they are not good at picking up wifi & networks (roaming etc) is this the case?