For Tech Sake

Staying in contact with family and friend's whilst on my trip is very important to me. Having the ability to speak to loved one's or video calling them something of a must. If nothing else just to reassure them that I am in good shape and all is well. I am a keen photographer and I would like to document my trip using some of the photos I will be taking.

Laptop

Now, my original thought was to buy a cheap laptop. I noticed a flaw in my plan, A small laptop is not cheap. Yes you can buy a laptop for around £300.00 pounds but there is a problem. Number one, it's going to be too big and number two, who needs to be dragging along the Titanic with them. To get a small laptop, or should I say an ultra book, it going to set me back £600.00 min. Then there is the weight issue. Not a problem when your at home but when riding around Europe it's something you need to think about.  

The laptop I chose was the Lenovo IdeaPad U410 Ultrabook coming in at £699.00. The spec on this laptop is really good for the price but at the end of the day it's still a lot of money. Then there's is the weight issue, at 1.85 Kgs it's not really heavy but this is just the laptop and not the charger. So with the charger this would come in at around 3.6 Kgs. Then you have the battery life, which at best will give you about 8 hours... so the manufacturers claim? But in reality I think 3 to 4 hours, is a more realistic estimate. Managing power is a different matter also. I looked at the Solar Gorilla which is a fairly large solar capture device and a power gorilla which is a solar storage unit. So all in all with the Laptop and Solar units I would be looking at £1000.00 

Tablets 

The idea of a laptop soon became unrealistic. I looked at the Apple Ipad and the Mini Ipad. The main problem's that I encontered was firstly price, secondly price and thirdly, there is absoulutey no way of loading images on to these devices without  the aid of a computer. Now Danny a good friend of mine, advised me about google's Nexus tablet. We started looking at the Nexus 7 which comperes to Apples Mini Ipad. The price was bang on, at only £200.00 for the 32 gig version, compered to Apples £350.00 for the same storage, but what about loading images on to it? Well that's not a problem either. There is a app called Nexus media importer that cost £2.62. which lets you import images and other media such as music or even video footage. I will also need a OTG cable which uses the mirco usb on the nexus and a normal female USB socket, there fore allowing you to plug in a media device such as a card reader. There is also the power consumption. The Nexus will run for 9 hours on the web, and has a standby time of around 300. hours. Managing the power needs of the tablet, my iphone, my camera and various accessories will all be  catered for with the Powermonkey Extreme coming in at £120.00

So all in all my communication, creativity, entertainment and power needs will come in at £320.00 pounds. 
Needless to say I've ordered the Nexus 7. I'll let you know how things pan out.