UKH

Hello,

My friend and I are going off on 4.5 month climbing trip later this summer and are considering going splits on a cheap net book.

I currently have a Macbook pro, which says steal me all over it. Ideally I'm looking something a little less shinny, smaller and quite a lot cheaper.

The computer doesn't need to do much. It needs to be:
-Small and light
-durable
-cheapish
-Good battery
-wirless internet connection
-word processing
-be able to download photos and up load them online
-works with skype
-It would also be helpful if we could watch films on it, but not essential.

As is fairly obvious from the post I know bugger all about computers.

What should I buy and how much should I be looking to pay?

I was thinking about getting an Ipad, but they are expensive and say steal me all over them.

The same friend and I are also looking at going on a trip to Pakistan the following year. Out there we would like to use the net book to receive weather updates via a sat phone, while a base camp. Will any old computer do for this? I have heard something about a solid state, but have no idea what this or what it means!

Cheers for humouring all the dumb questions...

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

Nexus 7?

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:
Acer Aspire One.
for £100 you'll get a good cond SH one with a gig of RAM at least, windows 7 starter, HDD of about 250 gig, web cam, card reader, wifi etc.

Solid state is the name given to components with no moving parts and in the case of laptops it refers to the HDD. A SSHDD is basically a 'flash drive rather than the more usual spinning disc. Price per gig is prohibative still, best stick to a normal HDD. I've a netbook with an 8gig SSHDD and the speed increase isn't worth the massive drop in storeage space over a normal HDD.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

Hi were on round the trip,
we use the Samsung NCC110 Net book.

of all the small netbooks available it has the longest battery life 9 hours,

if your watching movies on it its nearer 6 but we can usually get 3 movies out of a full charge, the Acer aspire has only a 2 hour life.

hope that helps

neil

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: You will need a solid state drive if at altitude. A HDD crashes since the read head floats above the platter and at altitude the air is too thin. I have seen HDD crash at 4500m+ If for personal use Nexus 7 ideal. Battery charging facilities?

In reply to blanchie14c:

Chees... where do I find one for £100? Also how long will the battery last?

In reply to m0unt41n:

Is the Nexus 7 solid state?

Battery charging will probably be via one of those goal zero chargers.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:
Ebay mate. Its a good shout about the Samsungs too, they do indeed have great battery life but do comand a higher price. As said, a couple of hours battery life from the Acer but extended life batteries for them are fairly cheap on ebay too, it'd be good to have a spare. there isn't a great deal to go wrong with either the Samsung or the Acer and a replacement screen for them (10.1 inch) is only 30 quid and very easy to fit as long as you haven't got sausage fingers

In reply to blanchie14c:

Cheers mate... what do you think of item number: 161008178409

My base camp is going to be at around 4800m, any ideas if this sort of thing will work there?

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: unfortunatley I can't get on ebay while I'm at work, its blocked here. Do you mean that they'll work ok at altitude? I'd have thought so, they have computers in space after all! The cold will be your enemy, you'll need to try and insulate it at night. Won't damage it but the battery will drain a lot faster in the cold.

In reply to blanchie14c:

What about what the other poster said: You will need a solid state drive if at altitude. A HDD crashes since the read head floats above the platter and at altitude the air is too thin. I have seen HDD crash at 4500m+ If for personal use Nexus 7 ideal. Battery charging facilities?

Does a cheap tablet like a nexus 7 have solid state memory?

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

Almost all tablets are Solid State drives and your average Nexus 7 is 32Gb and does all you require in the OP. You also have access, internet providing, to hundreds of thousands of apps.

Its small, light and excellent on battery power.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: Keep an open mind with these things though, 1000's of HDDs crash at sea level every day too!
Yes, tablets generally have SS drives to svae space and make them thinner

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

Are you clumsy with your laptops, do you trust those borrowing your laptops or do you trust baggage handlers to look after your kit while in transit?

Less moving parts means less to be broken while in use or being transported.

There's a thought to mess with your mind.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: my daughter has a toshiba only a year old with very little use.Has full windows word excell ect installed. if your interested I can let you know the model tonight, £80 plus postage would do it. Cheers

In reply to blanchie14c:
The computers in space are specially made obviously, from what I've heard, they're all SSD, the older ones use tape for date storage.
I've got a ASUS EEE the seashell series, cost £200 about 2 years ago, I've dropped it about 12 times, sat on it, never re-installed it, only defragged it once or twice, It's been my main computer all that time and has had a hard life, but there isn't so much as a dead pixel on the screen. The only real sign of use is the change in colour on the left click button the mouse keypad! Battery life is only about 3 hours now but that's good going as it's always running on the battery. I've used it below 0 and in humid conditions but never taken it to altitude. Oh yeah, I also spilt water on it, one of the keys broke but I tipped it upside down, let it dry and it worked again!

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide: Dude trust me stay away from android because if you need to copy and paste it will break your heart. Even if you have a keyboard it will drive you mad. My advice is to get a small cheap ass windows based laptop. I am a tech geek and I have a macbook pro, ipad and asus transformer. If I was going on a trip i would take none of these and get a microsoft small laptop.

In reply to danrock101: I thinks thats a real testament to the build quality of ASUS in general. Is yours a SS HDD? I got my daughter the ASUS EEE netbook for xmas for a great price when Comet when bang, its a great little machine.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

just cover your MBP in gaff tape.

In reply to Aigen:

I feel your pain, I really do. However, Chrome plays nicely with cut and paste. All the other web explorers make my go into fits of rage.

In reply to blanchie14c:
Mines HDD but I do have a 40-80gb SSD that I've been meaning to swap over. Hopefully I get a good few more years out of it me little netbook. Interestingly my sister got a fancy Sony one at the same time and that's not working.

Not cheap but FYI my friend and I both had Macbook Airs at 4,900 m for a couple of months last year and then took them over the Gondogora La pass amongst other things. Great litte expedition computer.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I got a Nexus 7, which I'm getting the grips of.

Does anyone have any expirence of uploading photos from an SD card?

I'm following the advice recommended here: http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/ipad-and-tablets/how-to-transfer-files-from-an-sd...

But am struggling to get my head round it.

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:


With the Nexus 7 that I bought for my dad, I simply connected it to my computer with a micro-usb and USB cable. From there I dragged and dropped from my computer to the Nexus 7.

After filling the Nexus with photos, music and films I've not played with it beyond that.

ES File Explorer is an excellent app that will allow you to connect to a computer network where you can copy info wirelessly from a computer to the Nexus.


And its free.


I've never seen or used the device you have in the link but I'm guessing that it is just a way of hooking up a USB card reader to a micro USB port on your Nexus.

Just use the ES File Explorer to swap the files over. It took a while to learn how to copy files as you do NOT drag and drop. The method is to select the files you want and then copy them. You then go to the folder where you want the images to go, you could even create your own folder, and then either select to paste in the folder or move into the folder. Personally I'd select to paste. That way you have images on the SD card and the Nexus.

http://to.ly/l7Lg

In reply to Tom Ripley Mountain Guide:

Top tip.

Learn how to do a Cold Boot. There will come a time when your Tablet will not switch on and you think that it has died.

There are a few tips on this site but scroll down to hard reset. It happened once to my Asus Tablet and has just happened with my dad's new Nexus 7. Never hapend since and I've had my tablet 14 months.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/28928/google-nexus-7-tablet-hard-reset-or-re...