Comments on: Laptop Travel: How To Pick Your Perfect Laptop

By: Nancy Brown

Nancy Brown — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:02:37 +0000

Thanks, Kevin, for this helpful travel tip. Tim Patterson directed me your way when I asked a fellow travel writer for her laptop recommendations.

I love the BNT and Matador community!
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/What-A-Trip/

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By: LL

LL — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:55:31 +0000

I have travelled a lot with an ASUS EeePC, a tiny notebook which runs Windows XP. The 7″ screen is bright, the battery life 2-3 hours, the adapter very small, and the price $300-400. You will need a USB stick or USB hard drive for serious work, but as a travel laptop it is unparalleled.

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By: Dan Halberstein

Dan Halberstein — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:26:26 +0000

Given the rash of recent battery-related, and battery powered equipment-related fires and other incidents, some battery safety information might be appropriate, especially when traveling by air. Check out http://safetravel.dot.gov for battery and portable electronic device safety tips for travelers.

Thanks,

Dan

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By: Chris LaRoche

Chris LaRoche — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:06:30 +0000

I think you should reiterate that a traveling laptop is NOT like a home laptop -you don’t need the space, nor the speed, nor, in my opinion, the DVD player. Nor do you want something irreplaceable or really expensive.

This last summer, I traveled with Dell Inspiron 700 (at leat I think that’s what the number was) which at five years old is not pre-historic, just medieval. It’s small, and weighed just a few pounds yet was durable. A working USB drive and wifi card enabled me to get online anywhere and store information (much easier than a CDRW). The battery lasted three hours. And it costs (currently) on ebay less than $100. Just my two cents worth…

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By: dodong flores

dodong flores — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:13:35 +0000

Just like Scribetrotter, I also used a prehistoric laptop (though not as jurassic as his), a Toshiba laptop with 200 megahertz processor. It served me for 8 years until the monitor died last year. I had replaced it with another laptop, a Neo brand that only costed me US$560 brand new. Other than the weight and size, there’s no other difference with it as compared to high-end brands…

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By: Scribetrotter

Scribetrotter — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:57:55 +0000

This may sound prehistoric but I traveled around the world for three years with a very early Digital laptop – bought in early 1996. To clean it, you took the entire top off, keys and all…

There was no wifi and the only email we had was compuserve – my username was a number and to plug in, I used a large, bulky connector that sent a signal not through the phone line but through the actual phone handset!

In the Harare post office one day, I set myself up (quite an operation in those days) and within minutes I had a crowd of several dozen people around me who had never seen a laptop.

My Digital was light and delicate, and it finally bit the dust in 1998 in Bangkok, when I replaced it with a far sturdier – and far heavier – Toshiba.

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By: Tara G.

Tara G. — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:08:38 +0000

I totally agree with using Ebay or Craigslist to buy a laptop at a great price. Especially if you are looking to use it for travel. Nothing is more painful than losing or permanently damaging your laptop in the middle of a trip! It is 100% worse if that laptop cost more than your plane ticket!

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