Thailand forum

I went through your dilemma and decided to bring the laptop. I figured since I was planning to be gone for 6 months to a year it'd have depreciated in value so much by the time I got back it wasn't worth fretting about it getting pinched.

I'm typing on it now after 7.5 months of travel and I have to say, it has been a major pain in the backside to cart around the whole time. That said, mine has a 16" screen and weighs like 3kgs.

If I had the luxury of choosing what to bring all over again, I'd probably opt for a netbook (small lappy with net access but limited hard drive space and no CD/DVD drive). Those things are great for travelling around with. My beast is good if you don't mind hunkering down in one place for a month here and there.

Also, you can insure a laptop through companies like ... World Nomads.

Places like Bangkok and Phuket have no shortage of tech stuff for you to buy - both knockoff and genuine.

i have a small lightweight laptop (macair) and love it to pieces. cannot imagine traveling without it. You can get a cheapie netbook in BKK. Go to pantip plaza, top floor. They will have every imaginable netbook for a decent price with pretty knowledgable & english speaking staff as well.

You can buy a decent netbook for about 300-500US in Thailand from what I've seen. I'm pretty sure anywhere with an airport will have a a pc store where you can get your hands on this stuff.

Good idea to password protect USB sticks.

I disagree with Madmac about just going to net cafes because the security is woeful and it'd be easy for someone to use a keylogger and get access to your email and bank details that way. Plus they overcharge IMO and its a pain to have to go and use a net cafe when you could just have the net etc with you in your room, as long as there's wifi.

That's reliable wifi too. You have to account for signal strength and the distance from the router to your room... reason I bought a signal amplifier from Pantip ($35US will double the bars on your reception).

I planned to mess around with photoshop, premiere video editing and 3d/flash graphics whilst away, hence I brought a beast of a laptop. Also, the 16" screen is great for keeping up with all the latest movies and TV shows.

That said, I could live with a smaller screen and less processing power really.

Again, if you're away for like 3 months and just want to keep in touch with the world - netbook it all the way. I'm basically away until the money runs out, which could be substantially longer, and I like my tech.

Yes - I wrote it!


Reason = Bad security. I don't know about you guys but I don't want other people reading my personal email or getting into my online banking.

There's one communal computer at a cafe I go to where as soon as you click on Yahoo, you are automatically logged into some Thai girl's email account. You can see the two guys she's stringing along, their pics, their cheesy lines, everything.


I caught all that in a 2 second glance of course, as I was busy minding my own business and shutting down the window.

I don't need strangers seeing my cheesy pickup lines.

I do online banking and I do care who reads my email.

Plus I'm staying in one of the most touristy parts of the country where many Thai can read English, I guess because much of their business comes from people who speak it.

Maybe if I was backpacking through Issan or the North where you are (?), I'd let my guard down a bit. In my experience, a little paranoia now and then doesn't hurt your chances of an incident-free vacation - long or short.

I almost "need" the net to survive. It saves SO much time with planning things.

I'm a gen XY'er though, so maybe it's bred into us more, the net dependency. Guys over 50 probably barely see what all the fuss is about.

Won't you get Travel Fish withdrawals?

~

Nope. It seems like I'm on it a lot, but the reality is a check it a couple of times a day when I'm bored. If I move to the village, I'll keep busy farming.

I don't know. I am taking my time, doing it right, as I already own a house in the city where I am living now. I have a very specific vision and don't want to rush things to get it done. It will be years for sure since I am also funding my sons university.

PS How do you do a smiley face with a tilda sticking out of one (or both) ears Cranky?

@MM - netbooks are hardly "lugged around" - they're usually 1kg and could easily fit in a backpack with a bunch of other stuff.

@SBE - normally with straight text I would draw a cheeky face with tongue sticking out by pressing : and ) and ~ without the spaces and 'ands'.

The auto-emoticon thing in the java script or whatever for the site converts the colon and bracket into a yellow smiley face graphic but leaves the tongue tilda ~ as is. So it looks like a a tongue sticking out of a happy face ear. A bit. You could probably do two tongues like this.... (testing)

~~

Cranky,
Unless I can put it in my pants pocket, I'm lugging it around. That means when I go out, it's staying in the room and subject to pilfering. That would be the biggest inhibitor for me.

Well, my wife's camera that is an issue. My camera fits inside my cargo pocket. When I'm on the road, I check my mail every few days and that's it. My phone has a game on it and an MP3 player to listen to music. And of course it's just my opinion - pretty much true of all the non-factual stuff here. Like I said to Cranky, I would consider it a worry and a burden and I don't really feel a need for one. He does - and I suspect it's more of a generational thing as my son doesn't go anywhere without his either (well he didn't until it died - he doesn't have money for a new one). From my perspective it's just not worth the bother. Of course, when I take the horrible bus to Bangkok, it would be cool on the bus ride, but then I'd be concerned about it at the cheap hotel I stay at.

Cranky
I realise what you CAN do. Hell, my son loves showing me that crap. I'm just not interested. The movie aspect is a plus, but that's it. The rest isn't important to me. When I hit the road, I'm not interested in connecting to the world. In fact, getting away from the wider world is kind of the point.

I AM back home.

Also, have to say I entirely agree with SBE's point about internet cafés - I'm not a fan except when they're an absolute necessity.

"Internet cafes are the pits...why sit hunched over a public computer seething with trojans and keyloggers in a grotty internet cafe when you can access the internet securely and in comfort practically wherever and whenever you want nowadays? You have access to all your own files, you can store pictures, download travel info, listen to music, play games or watch MP4 movies on long bus trips... all that inside a piece of kit that's about the same weight as one LP guide book."

A letter fell off my last laptop too but it was an E. That laptop was too big anyway, 14" or 15" screen, and it weighed way too much so I bought an Asus netbook.

Carrying the Asus netbook around has been effortless. It easily fits into a small day bag and is very light but the bloody thing has been plagued with battery and charging issues so it's often been unusable. I bought it in Thailand so the warranty only works in Thailand. That shouldn't be too much of a problem for you though. After-service has been OK. They've never tried to make out that the computer wasn't defective and they fixed a charging problem for free even after the guarantee had expired. Problem is that they often have to wait 2-3 weeks for spare parts from Taiwan or wherever it is they make Asus.

So I don't know if I'd recommend the netbook I use. I chose it because of long battery life but if the battery won't change that's not much use! The model I have is a 1005HA, maybe later models are more reliable. Otherwise Acer do good and cheap netbooks too.

Note to self: insure things. password protect.

Use common sense and you won't be me.

I had a laptop. I miss it. I will replace. Annoying to carry, but I spent a lot of time on it duh.

Peace.

'sheeed

...insure things. password protect.

Rasheed - I must have missed your story about this somewhere...

In terms of password protecting - I like using TrueCrypt which essentially hides all your docs, etc in a hidden drive on the laptop. If anyone steals it, all they will see is a cryptically name file that doesn't look interesting. I use it on my netbook when travelling, for my external drive backups for my home laptop, and for my more sensitive docs on my home laptop. It's brilliant.

(And yes, I have probably exposed myself to sounding a true geek. I'm not, really!)

@Lizzy - "The other thing is that is has a 1366x768 resultion screen which means the writing is a bit smaller"

You know you can adjust the font size no matter what the native resolution is, right lizzy?

Actually the easiest way to do this when browsing the net or PDF docs is to hold down the left 'Ctrl' button and scroll the wheel on the mouse up and down. Might save those eyes of yours a bit of strain eh?

You know you can adjust the font size no matter what the native resolution is, right lizzy?

Yeah, I know that, Cranky, thanks. But I hate scrolling more than squinting. Smaller font size means I can see more on my screen at once. Actually, my netbook has a cool touchpad feature that means I can just zoom in/out by swiping my thumbs away/towards each other. Don't even need the mouse .

Speaking of mice, I have the coolest mouse (designed/developed in NZ, I might add). I love this little baby and keep it on the laptop at home - but it's going to be great to travel with on the netbook. It really does live up to all the hype on the website. It's perhaps a bit on the pricey side, but I was fortunate enough to win mine. Just had a look on their dealer's page, and it's now available in Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong as well as others.

@Liz - my mouse cost 100 baht, on special from Carrefour, and it does the job juuuust fine.

@Rasheed - I can barely find the time, inclination and wifi to fill one blog - much less two!