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Equipping the Bike - what's the best gear? Anything to do with the bikes equipment, saddlebags, etc. Questions on repairs and maintenance of the bike itself belong in the Brand Specific Tech Forums.
Photo by Ellen Delis, Lagunas Ojos del Campo, Antofalla, Catamarca

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Photo by Ellen Delis,
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Antofalla, Catamarca



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  #1  
Old 2 May 2011
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Carrying laptop?
Hey guys,

Doing my research into bike and gear for a South American trip, and the only thing I'm worrying about is the safest way to carry my 14" laptop, protecting it as much as possible from bumps and jarring. And since a laptop is my means of making $$$ wherever I may be I can't really "not" take it...

I don't need to be doing any mad off road scrambles, but common sense says I'll be hitting some dirt and rubble around the place. I understand I can't protect it from everything, but would obviously like to do all that I can.

So any advice from those who have gone before me?

Cheers.
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  #2  
Old 2 May 2011
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Laptop
Here's what I did for carrying my MacBook Pro on my 1200GSA. Not sure what your riding or what panniers (hard or soft), but it might give you some inspiration..

Mac+Pelican+BMW Pannier Mod - ADVrider

Mike
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Old 2 May 2011
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otterbox

travel with it off
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Old 2 May 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mtncrawler View Post
Here's what I did for carrying my MacBook Pro on my 1200GSA. Not sure what your riding or what panniers (hard or soft), but it might give you some inspiration..

Mac+Pelican+BMW Pannier Mod - ADVrider
I like that, though might be going on a bike that may be too small for that setup. But gives me something to think about.

Would I be unrealistic (I've not done any distance riding before) to think I could wear a small daypack on my back for just the laptop? Would this give more shock absorbsion than being in luggage strapped to actual bike?
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Old 2 May 2011
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14" is a large for a bike trip.

If you can do without a CD-Rom, why not get a small inexpensive 10" Notebook. That's what most people are using now.. I used a HP Mini and it was great.

Then go to the supermarket and buy a plastic lunch box with the side flip handles. Buy some foam (thick carpet underlay is PERFECT) to sandwich the notebook between. Costs about £7 in total and works much better than the expensive alternatives on the market.
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Old 2 May 2011
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Not sure how much space you have, but I had hard panniers and packed a 13" Toshiba into some foam sandwich and road it hard through two years and over 180,000km some of it very tough stuff.

The foam fully surrounded it and this allowed the bike to move 'around' the computer. It was never turned on anyway while riding, so it probably did not matter much, but for my piece of mind it worked fine.

As I had need of the DVD, to burn and send home photos, if I added an external drive, it would still take up space etc, so I went the whole hog.
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Old 2 May 2011
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Originally Posted by *Touring Ted* View Post
14" is a large for a bike trip.
May be big for a bike trip, it's really small for what I need it for while on the road: website design. I'm not going for a few weeks, I'm going for a year or more, and unfortunately need to earn some money from clients back home while I'm traveling, stopping off for a week or more someplace if I have a project on. Hence my requirements. 14" is the minimum screen size I can realistically go down too.

So sounds like foam of some kind, and then either in side panniers or in amongst my clothes (read in another thread), anything hat helps he bike move "around" the laptop and gives a little?

Thanks for the tips, lots to think about.

Cheers.
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Old 6 May 2011
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Love the hardcase option (nice job on the mod) and it's military spec to be sure. With all due respect though it maybe a tad overkill for most travelers. Why not look at something like this from Ortlieb? Cheap and once in a pannier very safe and sound.
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Old 6 May 2011
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I am not up on PCs/Laptops and it may seem obvious, but from what I saw/learned from Colebatch and his 10" Asus is

The unit should be carried such that -
- it is locally supported to be rigid (2 LCD screens broke, presumably due to flexing)
- it is kept in a waterproof environment (say no more)
- it is protected from shock and vibration
- it is secure from casual theft

AND
- everything is regularly backed up onto external Hard Drives, carried separately

All our photos, video clips and the GPS record were daily downloaded into the PC AND backed up in Hard Drives.
At the end of a hard day of riding and pushing bikes [and picking mine up!] it must have been mightily tempting to put that all off for another time. But no.
I really admired his self-discipline, dedication and diligence in never failing to do this (and write up the daily blog) irrrspective of if we were in a hotel, someones home, a river barge, railway huts, abandoned buildings, hunter's lair or camping on ice/snow at 2500m or by a river surrounded by swarms of mosquitos.
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