We are in the same dilemma, though we even want to be able to edit the movie clips we shot with the GoPro right away :-) As we don't want to face the horror of editing all this stuff after coming back from a 4-5 months trip... rather start it on the road.

We also initially thought about just taking a tablet (further tech family would include an iPhone 3, samsung S2 plus smartphone, garmin and the GoPro - and possibly the BRCK modem, if we can get it ). But now I think a tablet won't be enough... there are apps for this, but I know video editing is a fidgety work as it is on the laptop, I can't imagine doing that on the tablet... anyone any experience with video / sound editing on a tablet?

Also, we have a Garmin and wanted to connect it to the tablet to do the route planning there (and then load it on the Garmin). Seems that there are no apps for Garmin! (or at least no apps for android or mac-tablets, and I don't know if I want to go windows for a tablet...).

And lastly, a friend here in SA told us he wrecked two harddrives in his laptop while just commuting with the motorcycle to work (commuting on dirt roads, though ). The vibrations just wrecked it.
So he strongly recommend to get a device with a solid state drive. Which is quite costly. Anyone had similar experiences?

I've done a lot of rough miles with all sorts of laptops over the years. I even had a massive crash with a 17" Dell which got thrown down the road and it still worked perfectly... The trick is to NEVER have the HDD active whilst moving. Some make the mistake to have the laptop in sleep or hibernation mode which still has the HDD ticking over. With vibrations, it will kill it....

However,

Solid state Hard drives have really come down in price and they are far more reliable and faster to access. The only downside is that their capacity is a lot smaller for the same price.

But that's what USB flash drives are for.. Once or two of those and you should be okay. You can get a whopping 128GB flash drive for about £50 quid now and MASSIVE 256GB one for about £120.

USB flash drives are GREAT for travelling.


I think I've made my mind up..... I'm getting a 10" netbook with Win 7 and a sold state drive and a couple of 128 GB flash drives.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

I bought a "touchlet sx7" no I'd never heard of them either. Runs with android has a 7 inch screen , can be used with a Bluetooth keyboard. What swayed it for me was the dual sim card slots. Buy a cheap sim card on country entry and still be available on your normal number. It cost 170€ ....yes it has its limits but I've been using mine over 8 months and have left the netbook in its bag.
Its big enough to use as an e-book reader, video screen is big enough, I do Skype and telephone with it via a BT headset as it looks daft holding such a TV to your ear.....and it has a USB port for an external drive. They do a 10 inch one too but that ain't going in your pocket :-) :-)

sent from my thingy, using whatchamacallit

Rugged net books are harder and harder to come by, so no I am running on an iPad 2 in a otter box shell, together with a Bluetooth keyboard, which you can find at any dealer that sells tablets, it works like a sharm, no problem with lengthy writing.
Downside is that i can not transfer any pictures from my slr to the tablet, so that have to wait until I get to a proper computer. Instead, I have portable hardrive I can use when I find a Internet cafe. On that hard drive is all the tools i need to take care of the pictures from the slr, mostly by using portable apps.

Why can't you transfer photos from your SLR? I have no problems transferring photos from my Canon DSLR onto my iPad 2. You just need the adaptor that allows a USB connection and then the photos can be transferred to iPhoto easily.

Having said that, I'll be taking my Macbook Air 11-inch on my next trip, along with a My Passport For Mac external drive, and the iPad 2.

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2014 overland adventure to Russia and Central Asia in Land Rover Defender www.bermudarover.com

That's what people have been telling me, and I will check it up. I guess that I have been to lazy about it :0. I'm more of a Linux guy, and actually this iPad is my first Apple product, and I am surprisingly very happy with it, even though I am not ready to convert ..... Yet

I've got myself a Panasonic Toughbook. Pretty rugged, reasonably waterproof and able to cope with knocks and vibration. On the downside a bit heavy

I bought one of the original Eee 701s for about £120 when they were going out of production, and dragged it all over the UK and Europe for a few years. SSD, card slot, virtually indestructable, cheap enough it wouldn't matter if you did. Perfect travel machine...


...until you get a video camera. While it will deal with backing up files and reviewing stills, it won't even play 720p video, let alone do anything resembling editing - didn't want to do anything fancy, just cut a couple of minutes out of longer videos to post snippets online while on the road. Proper editing can be done at home.

So then I bought a 10" Archos tablet - again for about £120 in a sale. As long as you keep the screen protected with a case, the same applies as for the Eee - cheap, solid state, proper full-size USB host port to take a card reader. Plus it can deal with video (although I've still not found a decent Android video editor).

Took that to the US with me last year, and it worked pretty well. Given I tended to write a lot more than I did stuff with video, I did miss having a real keyboard. I'm currently trying to turn my notes from the trip into a proper writeup - I'm pretty sure there would be less work to do now if I'd had the Eee with me to type on as I went along.

At home I'll always use my 15" laptop for anything other than idle web browsing, again because of the keyboard. But I would be a bit edgy carrying my (relatively cheap) £500 laptop on a bike trip. If I took leave of my senses enough to pay whatever a Macbook Air costs, I'd be too scared to take it out of the house

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dashmoto.net

You just need this Apple connection kit. The connector on the left is the USB connector that will allow the SLR (or other cameras) to be connected. LINK

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2014 overland adventure to Russia and Central Asia in Land Rover Defender www.bermudarover.com

I started out taking a netbook. Move to a macbook air. Last trip I took an iPad and iUSBport with an external drive so I could transfer video to the hard drive.

I was amazed the iPad did everything I needed, the only thing that defeated it was the spreadsheet used by my accountant for my business accounts.

Macbook air is great but I ruined a Nikon camera on gravel roads so decided the ipad might be a bit more forgiving on rough roads.

Lilian

smart phone and Kindle

Smart phone replaces computer, camera, GPS, kindle replaces IPad and books.

Multi use is good


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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Charles CCM450, BMW R90/6, BMW R50
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...a/027_27-1.jpg

I agree with the previous poster - keep it simple and use devices that can multi-task. Currently my solution is:

• Andriod phone with reasonable camera and GPS
• Android tablet
• Google email account to tie it all together.

Unless you are serious about your photography a phone seems to me to take more than adequate shots. If you use Googles Photo App they also then magically send themselves up to free unlimited cloud storage via wi-fi and then become viewable on your tablet etc. The app also has some useful features where it also automatically selects your best photos and makes up little storybooks with them.

I am sure there are some quality compromises in all of this and i know some people don't like committing all their life to a software company, however for me this is as close to perfect as I can currently imagine - no more pulling SD cards out of cameras, connecting to computers, backing up to USB sticks or external drives, nor time spent fiddling with photo software I only vaguely understood - time I much prefer to spend wandering around and drinking a local .

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Martin

finally back on the road again


http://awayonmybike.blogspot.com/

The multi-task kit idea works with simple items like a spork, or tyre levers with a spanner end. It's not as good with phone, music, gps, web device, camera.

But as with everything it depends what you are doing and what you want to get out of it.

I doubt very much anyone would want to write a 6 month ride report on their phone, complete with resizing images, and uploading to them to a suitable webspace.

Actually music and phones do tend to work well.

I wish I could carry less devices. Well I could, but that would ruin a lot of the enjoyment for me. Making little video clips, photographing things, maintaining a strong web presences, keeping in touch with communities like this etc..

Each unto their own.

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My blog about touring and adv riding

I can agree with you on the phone been adequate for taking photos, I used an apple 4S for all my photos when I was on my Laos and Thailand trip and it took some great shots

Wayne

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

Same. I used to have a dedicated digital camera with a whopping 2mp! A mini disk player with as many disks as I could carry, map books galore and hours in sweaty internet cafes (which was always a waste of time in the grand scheme of things and much better spent sucking up the vibe. Met travellers that borrowed other people's stories to fill their blogs because they were blogging). Thank F those days are gone. Gave up the logs long ago. Social media filled that gap nicely.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com