Travel technology forum

Hi there - I'm no expert on the subject as we're about to leave on our trip mid-January but we bought a little Acer netbook for about $320 that we're taking with us. It sounded nice to be able to have a tool to upload and thereby backup pictures, keep a travel blog from the comfort of wherever we happened to be, and most importantly be able to skype at will with our kids and family back home. with the time change it will be helpful to not worry about finding an open and convenient internet cafe when it is a good time to say goodnight to the kiddos. That was our reasoning - and it's little enough to not really worry about lugging around! Good luck!

Last time i was away (6 weeks) i took my macbook pro (bit of a heavy beast) and it was a hassle for me. I was working during the whole trip so it was a necessity to take it with me, i was house sitting for 3 weeks so security then was fine, but at all other times it was a bit of a worry as i only stayed at one place that could keep it safe while i wasn't there. My main concern was losing all my work so i backed everything up onto memory sticks and if i happened to have my room broken into then insurance would sort out the rest just inconvenient you know.

I only took it because i had to work, if you dont need it i wouldnt bother. Aside from any worrys of theft are the transport issues. If your mainly using it to do photos/internet etc just take the cable to conect camera to a pc and a usb memory stick and use internet cafes and ask if you can do it (every place ive used said it was fine).

I spent 2 years traveling around SE Asia lugging a 15.4" Dell notebook with me. It was a hassle and often a safety concern (ex. the carry-on sized backpack with the notebook in it never left my side), but it was probably worth it. I'd use it to back-up data, keep a travel journal, watch movies, etc. This was before Wi-Fi was everywhere in Asia so I still usually had to go to Internet cafes, so now it would be even more useful.

Now (Since Sept 2008) when I travel I take my 9" Acer Aspire One netbook. The battery life kinda sucks (< 2 hours), but otherwise it's fantastic. It weighs as much as a Lonely Planet guide and fits in my purse. The new Eee netbooks have much, much better battery life (~ 6 hours!!) and only run around $350 USD.

It's definitely worth buying something with decent specs and a reasonable battery life.
Wifi is becoming available in more and more places (especially in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines).
In net cafes you have to worry about noisy gamers, cigarette smoke and viruses.
I much prefer to go to McDonalds/KFC/Starbucks/Coffee Bean in Malaysia, Wawee Coffee in Thailand, or Starbucks/Bo's Coffee in the Philippines with my netbook.

We took an Asus 901 eee netbook. Only weighs a kg and it worked well. It was especially useful for internet banking if away for longer periods, plus researching your next destination, booking flights with a credit card etc. Stuff you really wouldn't want to do in an internet cafe.

If you're only away for a short time, I probably wouldn't bother though. Internet cafes are everywhere and usually faster than the poor little netbook.

Finally, there's no way I'd spend a lot of money on a netbook - too many things could go wrong, loss, damage, theft - if you do take, take something relatively cheap.