Adventure travel with laptop - Advice needed!

I will be travelling around the world for several months and am buying an ultraportable laptop to take with me. Haven't figured out which laptop yet, but will get no larger than 12" screen.

Anyway, I will probably keep the laptop in my hotel room a lot, but will want to carry it in my daypack if I know my day's travel will bring me near an internet cafe or the like. My daypack is a Camelbak Blowfish ( http://www.pricepoint.com/detail/13...ies-171-Hydration/2005-Camelbak-Blowfish.htm), so it's pretty small, but ultraportables can fit, and do so easily when I unzip the expansion portion of the pack. I don't really want to get a larger pack b/c this pack is super comfortable and I like that it is so small.

Questions:
1. If I just put the laptop in there w/o any special padding, will the normal jostling of walking harm the hard disk or optical drive? Should I only focus on laptops that have disk suspension mechanisms like the Thinkpad?

2. Has anyone tried stuffing one of the suspension-type sleeves like the Brain Cell or Monolith into a very small backpack? Are these sleeves much larger than the laptop? Any other suspension-type sleeves I should check out?

3. If it's safe to walk around w/o a suspension sleeve on a regular basis, I can probably stuff the laptop into the compartment designed for the hydration pack - decent padding there and nothing to scratch the laptop, so I can skip getting one of those non-suspended neoprene sleeves! Anyone try this?

TIA for advice and suggestions!

 

I carry my older Toshiba laptop around with me everyday without any special protection. Although the case is a little scratched up, it does not seem to have affected the harddrive or optical drive at all. I've been doing this every day for the last 2.5 years, so I wouldn't worry too much about it, although a disk suspension mechanism certainly couldn't hurt.

 

Active hard drive protection like Thinkpads have won't make any difference as long as the laptop is turned off - it only helps when the drive is running (and is most vulnerable). The magnesium 'roll cages' that Thinkpads have, however, would probably go a long way to protecting the internal components when the laptop is turned off.

I know some laptops also have shock mounted hard drives that do provide more physical cushioning, but unless you're really throwing it around, I don't know how much more useful it would be.

 

Like I said, it's a feature that certainly can't hurt to have, but probably isn't exactly necessary.

 

I've haven't looked at laptops in years - seems they are much more durable these days than several years ago.

 

Generally speaking the case and the LCD are the "fragile" parts of a laptop. If you damage the laptop it's going to be because you bang the backpack against something accidentally, or drop the backpack on the ground... etc...

Some external cushioning is prudent to avoid the extremely hard shock of the laptop, sitting inside the backpack, striking something equally solid. There are some simple "think" neoprene or closed cell foam sleeves that would probably do the trick and remain reasonably not bulky.

Do let us know what you pick up? I'm in nearly the same boat.. I'll be backpacking around SE Asia for 6 months or so and want a laptop to keep a travel journal and photos on, but want something small enough to bury in a backpack and to "hide".

 

Well, I was looking at 12" screen laptops, but IMHO, the ones with optical drives (a requirement for me) are not so much smaller than smallish 14" screen laptops that it's worth the tradeoff in higher price, fewer features, less power.

Plus I might be able to get an EPP discount at Lenovo, in which case, that might seal the deal for me on a T43; not very small, but thin and optical drive is removable to lower weight. Also, this would function as a desktop replacement when I return to US.

If I really wanted small and keep an optical drive, I think I'd go with Fujitsu P7120, but then I'd also get a desktop when I return to the US.

 

Do keep in mind you can get an external optical drive. The reality is you (I) wouldn't normally need the optical drive when I've run down to the local internet cafe. I need it in the hotel/hostel/beach shack at night when I want to off-load 3 GB of photos and send them home by air-mail on a DVD-R... or when I want to rip a couple locally purchased movies on to the HD for the next train ride...

 

I have a 12" ThinkPad X40 and I use the TomBihn monolith sleeve. Its not normal walking motion that you need to protect the notebook from its if you thump your bag on the ground or stuff it full of text books that you need some protection.

If you just need email in your travels you might want to consider getting a blackberry device, or a pda with attachable keyboard. They'd be alot easier to carry.

I've attached some pics of my X40 with the monolith and a sumdex sleeve for size comparison.

 

Thanks to all for the feedback.

I figure I'm not going to carry the laptop around all that much except for (i) between cities, but carrying is pretty minimal - mostly traveling by car, train or plane, and (ii) occasional trip to internet cafe or the like. Mostly I'll use it as JB510 described; burning pictures/videos from my travel and sending back home, emailing pics to friends, etc.

Agreed that I can use a separate optical drive, but I need to replace my aging desktop anyway, so if I got an ultraportable like the X40 or Lifebook P7010, I would probably also get a more powerful desktop when I returned home. And then I would have to deal with file synchronization which is a real pain in the arse.

So I'm leaning towards getting a "thin and light" that's on the smallish side like the T43, which would function as a desktop replacement when I get back to US (I would just plug into my large lcd monitor). When traveling and doing a day trip where I would stop by an internet cafe, I would just remove the optical drive to reduce the weight. Basically I'd be getting one machine that is good at both functions (travel and desktop use), but not great at either.

 

What do you do to protect your laptop when travelling abroad (non-business travel)? Obviously, I'll include the laptop in whatever travel insurance I get. What else?

 

I'd just like to say that synchronizing files between a desktop and notebook is pretty easy with microsofts synctoy. I use it to syn my text documents and Internet Explorer favorites folder. Its a free download too.

 

From what I recall about file synchronization software (and admittedly, it's been years since I've looked at this stuff), you have to specify which folders contain the files to sync. Easy enough if you are syncing work files between laptop and computer at the office.

But if the laptop and desktop are both personal, you might be working on many different files (in many, many different folders) on either computer. In addition to spreadsheets and Word docs, this also includes the MS Outlook database (email, tasks, notes, calendar), Quicken data files, etc. Managing to keep all this stuff synchronized seems pretty cumbersome.

Pls let me know if there is any existing sync software that can readily handle this level of sync'ing complexity, thanks.

 

When you get back home, you're probably going to want a bigger screen, bigger keyboard, and probably more power and HD space than than a thin/light provides. Consider how well a thin/light video card may or may not drive an external monitor.

File synchronization isn't nearly as bad as it once was. XP makes creating a home network with shared folders remarkable easy. So long as you set it up right behind a router/NAT/Firewall your plenty secure.

I'm a laptop only kind of guy, so I'm actually planning for two laptops. One a desktop replacement (my new Sager 5720) although I'm sorting out some issues with it. One an ultra portable, perhaps used... whatever I can get for reasonably cheap to minimize the cost/value of something I'll be lugging around SE Asia.

 

Well I already have a large LCD monitor at home, and I'll have that as well as a keyboard and mouse plugged into a docking station, and if I need more than 80gb (which my new laptop will have), I can get an external drive. I don't think I really need that much power b/c I don't do any movie editing or play any graphics intensive games. But if I do end up with a desktop, I'll use your advice on the shared folders in XP, thanks.