FYI - only taking a digital camera with me.
I use a web based photo album - www.chiizu.com - so i can plug my camera into any internet cafe HD using supplied USB cable. All software is web based so no downloads required to hard drive. Upload photos easily. 90 day free trial then costs US$20 per year for 500 photos storage. Very simple and no extra software of hardware required. Works well for me.

You can buy USB "stick" memory these days for a relatively good price. If you take a laptop, move the pics to the stick for backup when the computer dies. You can always unload the stick (USB) through any computer to a website, or burn a CD.

Amigos,
This system works. Just used it for 13 months from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego and back to the USA. Took 5 thousand photos, all at highest resolution with a 4 megpix Canon 400 camera.
1. Buy a Canon Camera with compact Flash memory card. Buy the leather case for protection.
2.Buy a 254 meg memory card to augment what it was sold with. Now you have two(a spare). You can take 100 high res photos before needing to dump the card.
3.Buy 2 batterys for the camera. The camera should come with 120/220V charger for the battery.
3. Buy a Archos Gmini120 ,220 or 400. MP3 player with a built in card reader for compact flash memory card. These players are 20-40 gigs of memory so do the math on how many times you can dump the memory card. I carried 15 gigs of tunes and used 5 gigs for photos, then burned CDs and sent them home via secure carrier like DHL. 5 gigs is 4-6 CDs. Never had a problem finding someone to burn CDs in North, Central or South America. Any medium sized city or tourist attraction city. If you run out of space you can dump tunes in a pinch but you need a PC to do this.
Right now the Gmini 120 is on sale at Amazon for $150usd. With the 120 no ability to view photos in the MP3. With the 220 and the 400 they have a screen and one is black and white the other is color. Only the gmini400 is now on the Archos website(www.archos.com)
This system worked for me every time. Survived a bad crash in Bolivia that put me in the hospital for 4 days, no walking for 2 weeks, wrecked the bike.
You have to learn to download the card so practice before you get out in the field. You can buy a card reader from Archos so the units will readSM/SD/MML/MS memory stick, smart media, multi media or secure digital cards fo $40usd. The state of the art400 series is $350 usd.
I shot every picture I wanted to, at least half from the saddle at speed. All shots were highest resolution. Burned 16 CDs of photos. I dropped the camera at the Paraguay border and cracked the screen and it finially failed in the Brazilian rain forest. Canon is reparing it for free on a one year warranty(hope/pray). Dont tell them it was out of the country. I can find no fault with the ststem. The battery recharger worked fine on 220V in S. America. A 12V charger is available from Canon for $60usd. Plus I had tunes all the way. Rock and roll, American music. Can you dig it?
Bill Shockley.

Last night at Wal-Mart, I saw to portable storage devices. The 2.5 gig one was the size of a tape measure and cost about $110 and the 40 gig one looked to be a bit bigger and cost somewhere aroun $200. They both had usb cords to plug into your camera. No lcd screens/viewers just storage.

Hi, I am in Poland now. I am using a Canon S1, with a Belkin reader and the iPod 40G. It all works great. NB: I charge everything on the bike while riding, on 12V. I had 2 extra 12V sockets made on the bike.

What I would like to add that I use photobucket.com and a Dutch blog site. So I pick it up from an iPod in an internet cafe and upload the photobucket site, which connects to the blog. Just wanted to let you know, you might need just that. The photo side automatically compresses my high res pics by the way. No idea how it does it http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif.

Check my blog at: martijnopdemotor.web-log.nl

It is in its infancy state.. just started it.

Martijn

Office max had a deal a little while ago for a 1 gig USB storage stick that was about $50 USD. They might still have it.

There is nowhere in SE Asia or Bangladesh through India Pakistan and Iran where you would not be able to get your photos put on CD....and quite cheaply as well. We have never had a problem and as it is so cheap get several copies made ....sending some to our kids at different address and keeping one ourselves so that if one gets broken there are extra copies. Asia will surprise you at the computor services available. If it is in your home country it will be in Asia (and the surrounding countries) as well.

I have had some ipod experience. My first ipod got wrecked when I put it in my pocket to protect if from a rain storm. Pocket filled with water. DOH!! That one I usually just had velcroed to the tank of my bike, and could change songs and such at will. Replaced it with an ipod mini, which would lock up completely after about 10 minutes on the bike. 3 out of 4 times it locked up so completely that it had to be reformated, all the contents were lost. That would be a very bad thing if it had all your pictures!! Also, if you let it go long enough without recharging, you will lose everything stored on it also.

If I hadnt already spent more money than I should for this trip to alaska, I would have gotten a 40gig ipod with the belkin adapter, and an add on battery pack so that I wouldnt have to worry every night about recharging it.

I'm having similar problems. I'm using the iPod just for backup storage, but I have had little luck getting pics on to the web. I can get USB connections, but only in Budapest have I found an internet cafe running XP. Windows 98 won't recognise my camera and wants software, which of course they will never let you download. XP recognises a camera as a storage device, so you can take pictures from it. I could connect the USB for either the iPod or the camera, but unless I can access it on the PC its all pointless. Am I missing something ? I realise Romania may not be cutting edge, but I have a lot of countries to go yet and my blog would be much more interesting with pics....

Theft would be one of my greatest concerns on a trip. Having backups with you won't help much if also the backup is stored with the original. People have been relieved of ALL their stuff before (some times even their life, in which backups only matters to those left behind).

For this very reason, the only way I would feel completely secure is if i could upload backups of my videos and pictures to a remote server. As this poses a problem with countries that have really sloooooooow internet connections, my second option would be to burn copies onto a DVD/r or CD/r and have them shipped home, maybe burn a copy to have with me just in case the mail doesn't get through. And as has been said, burning two copies to prevent files being lost from bad copies. And maybe even send from two diiferen places to increase the odds even more. To acchieve this, a pc with a burner is needed. You could bring one along or hope you can find someone on the way that has one... a fellow rider maybe?

Or, you could simply leave it up to faith...

On short trips I would be willing to risk the loss of pictures as there would not be that many. On a long trip to a region with poor infrastructures I would have brought something with a burner... If the infrastructure was good, I might only bring the necessary adapters and use somebody elses computer...

I have a laptop for photos and to update my web site. I take raw photos.

After fed exing back 90 cd's I realised it was taking too long. although obviously more expensive nothing (touch wood) has ever gone astray.

day to day management:

i have 2 cloned 80 gb hard drives:

c: windows & programs
d: my photos + my everything else.

i transfer photos etc to both drives regularly.

when d: is full i fed ex it home. once its been transferred to home pc i delete photos and start again.

i also use a 2gb CF card for ad hoc stuff.

------------------
Jerome

http://www.fowb.co.uk

I agree with David,
I am from India ( Now in Bombay and Pune) though at some places (rural areas etc) it might be difficult to get a High speed(Broaband) Cyber cafe. Burning the photos into CDs is no problem at all. Almost all Cyberccafes even in small towns will have CD writers. And as he rightly pointed out it is DIRT CHEAP to burn CDs!

Almost all cybercafes have CD writing available, you just have to make sure you carry your Camera USB cable with you so that the Pics can be transferred to the PC. Here one point to note is that Only if the OS is XP then the PC will recognize your camera as an external drive failing which you will have to carry the CD(Driver) of the custom software of the CAMERA company.

Even on a broad band internet connection in India it might still take eons to get the photos uploaded on to some remote server so I think burning the pics into CDs is the best alternative.

I had a ride last week with a friend with his very VERY portable Sony Cybershot! and I am convinced I would be going in for a very portable sleek camera even at the cost of extra features. The comfort of portability (of just leaving the camera in a very smallish pouch on your belt is tremendous) You do not have to carry an extra pouch and the camera has a max capacity of 5.1 Mpx(good enough for me.
A Big welcome to riders coming to India!
Red Bull



[This message has been edited by Red Bull (edited 07 January 2006).]

I'm confused.

Last time I went into an Internet cafe (admittedly a couple or more years ago) all you seemed to be able to do was connect to the net.

Generally, in say mainland Europe, do most Internet cafes have card readers, photo viewing programmes and CD-R facilities?

Not just in Europe but I would stick my neck out and say most of the world has there facitities available. There has been nowhere where we were not able to view our digital pics or get the cards transferred to CD's. In Asia it was so cheap we often got lots of copies to send to different members of our family. Even in places like northern Laos it is easy to get computor services. The shops may just look a little different to what you are used to....but then once you are on the road your vision of 'normal' changes a lot as well.

On one level, the ability to get easy computer services in northern Laos makes me a trifle sad...it'll be the big yellow M next! No, no, don't tell me it's already there.