Replacement computer for travel.

Radar · Guru

Replacement computer for travel.

Treecrest14 · Senior Member

You might like to look at the Microsoft Surface Pro range. They are Windows and you can attach a printer, just check out the memory size.
Glen

Dunmowin · Guru

We have a Dell Studio 17, but that is left over from my office days. As a freelance travel writer, I would not be able to write my "epistles" on a tablet, nor store all my photos.

All I can recommend is that you ensure whatever you end up with can be charged on both 12v and 240 power. We have an adaptor for Dell to enable 12v charging when ever we are freedom camping

Blues Man · Guru

Hi Ralph, we have a Dell studio 17 with windows 7 and just recently we upgraded to an Apple mac which i think is a far better PC

It took a bit of time to get used to and we had to get some lessons because of the different operating system (no viruses etc)

Once you get used to the operating system they are fantastic and you wouldn't go back to windows again.

Blues man.

Muskat55 · Veteran Member

Mac stuff is like having Hitler running your computer, but they are fine if you have limited IT knowledge and deep pockets. It is true that there are less viruses for Apple but this will change, many viruses were written by people who hated Microsoft for their perceived monopoly, however Apple is seen by many to be equally greedy, eg. changing power supplies in later models for no good reason other than profit. I've been on the net since the the very early 90s viruses are not really a problem if you are sensible. I'm running an ASUS T100 tablet/PC hybrid for its small size (10.1") and low weight(<1kg) and an external HD for backup, with standard Windows defender antivirus. Comes with Windows 8.1 (full version) and Office 2013.

-- Edited by Muskat55 on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 07:33:38 AM

Brownie2 · Senior Member

G'day Radar,
I think that posting a question like that is REALLY going to get you more confused!!
My simple advice is to buy your Windows laptop and get the fastest processor, largest hard drive, biggest screen, touch screen, etc, etc. that you can afford. Oh, and get good anti virus software.
The new laptop will probably come with Windows 8 which I have take time to come to terms with, but you will get used to it.
We also take away with us our ipads and use them for a lot of our on-line things and I use the laptop mainly for photos.
To add to the Apple/Windows debate, I believe that my next computer will be a Mac. We just had the hard drive replaced on our home PC (Windows), and if it hadn't been a viable fix I would have a Mac now.
Happy travels, Bob

-- Edited by Brownie2 on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 09:14:37 AM

Radar · Guru

Hi Muskat & Bluesman.

I drove a Mack for the last 8 years darn that was a truck.

Thank you for your encouragement to buy a Mac product, to do that at moment is not practical, with all our other Microsoft systems we have in place e.g. recording of photos & music.

Thank you for your time and reply. Ralph.

-- Edited by Radar on Wednesday 21st of January 2015 09:34:05 AM

Radar · Guru

Hi Dunmowin good morning.

Yes I will be taking that on board the alternate ways of recharging.

Like you my wife had 20 odd years of computer office use before retirement but worked with what she was supplied to do the work at hand. The home computer was always slow to her even when it was new and being top of the line home computer with plenty of speed.

Enjoy your day. Ralph.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

My advise is to buy something with flash memory, not a conventional hard drive.
Much more tolerant to vibrations involved with road travel.

Cheers,
Peter

PeterD · Guru

I used to think that bigger was better. My last conventional portable was a 17" model. In the last change I went the other way. I purchased an ASUS Transformer Book Trio TX201LA It only has an 11.6" screen but is brilliant in the van. I no longer have to fight the navigator for table space. They did go off the market for a while but I believe they are back. You may have to order them.

The Tri bit comes about as it has a detachable android tablet for the screen, the base has windows 8 as the operating system and as well they are well set up to operate alone attached to any huge screen that you have on hand through an HDMI mini connector. The tablet and base both have their own memory but they can access each others memory.

The underlying message is don't get caught with something too big. If you can afford something with an SSD disk in it go for it. Check it out to make sure it has the necessary port/s on it to drive your external monitor. If you are not into heavy photo editing or games there is no need to get anything too big in the processor speed, anything on the market will outpace the internet speeds. You spend more time waiting for things to download than you do waiting for the computer to respond at other times.

Gundog · Guru

Hi Radar

I defence of the Mac people they often cannot be swayed no matter what you say, they are a great but grossly over priced for what you get.

I will openly declare that I am a Toshiba man, I have 2 Toshiba Laptops and a Toshiba Android Tablet ( I did have a iPad but was unhappy with the dependency of iTunes), the tablet has std and mini USB along with a HDMI port and an SD port.

If I decide to replace my tablet, I will look for a windows tablet and hopefully it will be a Toshiba.

My suggestion a Surface Pro and a big solid state drive is the best option, CD-DVD-Blue Ray Drives are almost redundant like floppy disk drives are now, its far easier to download anything you require to solid state media like SSD's and flash drives, I have all my photo's, music and movies on portable hard drives.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

You could have an external CD burner.

Cheers,
Peter

SnowT · Guru

Depending on what you like...

Simple terms..

1 - A solid state drie for the main Drive..
2 - A As large as you can get secondary drive..

3 - A Blue ray Drive with the ability to read write Cd/dvd's.. This should give you the ability to burn to DVD..

-- Important factor..
- As much RAM as you can get.. A minimum of 8gb of RAM.. [ I prefer 16gb of RAM]

A Good Wifi Card.. The newer to Current standard the Better--

A good external HD @ least 3Tb for better back-up and storage..

A separate Video card if you like to play games or are into serious photo editing..

IT does not matter what brand as long as it does the job..

Radar · Guru

Hi PnM.

Yes portable cd drive is a very good a real option. .

50% of the computers in a major retail shop did not have cd drives.

A HP with solid state at $1450 is my pick, Marilyn liking a Surface Pro 3 but there Acer lurking there also at around $$900.

Here to computers. Ralph.

PeterD · Guru

Peter_n_Margaret wrote:
You could have an external CD burner.

Why stop at a CD burner. there are plenty of Blu Ray ones at less than $100 - http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-external-blu-ray-drive/

Muskat55 · Veteran Member

There is a reason many computers don't have CD/DVD/Blue ray drives as optical discs are old technology, they won't be around in a few years. I find solid state memory more convenient and reliable. If you can afford a large solid state drive that is the way to go IMHO. Peter D makes a good point unless you have a good reason or a very big rig why carry a boat anchor around. biggrin

-- Edited by Muskat55 on Thursday 22nd of January 2015 02:31:29 PM

Radar · Guru

Hi All.

Thank you All for your thoughts on the replacement computer.

We are certain that we will be taking on board some of these thoughts.

Once again thank you. Ralph.

Gundog · Guru

Radar for the life of me I cannot see a reason to buy an external optical drive(DVD etc.), when computers and laptops were being sold without floppy drives people went out and brought external drives, most of these reside in a cupboard or went to the dump.

People will say I like to save my photos on CD's or DVD's what a waste of time and money its far easier to save them to solid state media like portable USB SSD or passport style HHD's, the next excuse oh I want to hire a movie to watch, no worries the are plenty of sites that will allow you to hire or buy a movie and download over the net, if you want to save your download data, Install a good download manager and use wifi hotspots like local libraries, Maccas, HJ's etc.

I have 3 external USB HDD's a 3TB for movies[Currently I have 1.8TB of movies] a 1TB for photos and a 500GB for Music, when we do finally jump off and play in Oz's big backyard I will buy another 3TB drive which will used as a backup backing up important data, I also have a heap of SD Card USB sticks of various sizes.

You don't need a disk any more for the operating system most are now stored in a hidden partition within your PC or laptop, and you have the option to create a copy to a usb stick, everything else is available online.

I don't think I have used an optical drive for over 12 months,

graham

PeterD · Guru

Gundog wrote:
I don't think I have used an optical drive for over 12 months,

The computer magazines still distribute their programmes on DVD. Plenty of us still use them.

Radar · Guru

Hi All.

Hope you are keeping dry, in Brissie we have rain and more rain.

Yes we made a decision, spent the money and the baby home enjoying our hospitality.

Satellite by Toshiba with 8 gig of ram, 1 tb memory, 15 inch screen. Model no L50B05D.

We believe we got it at a good price but time will tell.

Thank you a All. Ralph.

Chalky47 · Member

Hi I'm a Mac girl forever. Have always had iMacs and older Mac computers. When I travel overseas I use my iPad and up load a few photos for my blog. When I get home I upload all to my computer from camera and iPhone. I use iPhoto to make photo books and back up everything on an external hard drive. I think the guy who made the Hitler comment hasn't really used Macs. It's interesting that people who graphic design choose Macs.
It's to be expected that technology has hiccups and glitches but I can honestly say that over 20 years I've only ever had one major prob when my first MacBook hard drive gave up. Usually I update to keep up with technology changes, not because things aren't working.
I do all my banking on my iPad, emails etc
Hope this helps.

PeterD · Guru

Radar wrote:
We will wish to stay with Microsoft which will narrow it down bit. No Apples thank you.

I don't know if people can't read. The OP specifically gave reason he would only be looking for Micro$oft systems. This often happens on other questions. We have no need of the off topic white noise.

Santa · Guru

Radar wrote:
Hi All.
Hope you are keeping dry, in Brissie we have rain and more rain.
Yes we made a decision, spent the money and the baby home enjoying our hospitality.
Satellite by Toshiba with 8 gig of ram, 1 tb memory, 15 inch screen. Model no L50B05D.
We believe we got it at a good price but time will tell.
Thank you a All. Ralph.

G'Day Ralph,

The Toshiba B50-B05D, sounds like a pretty good PC, reliable brand name, the i7 processor combined with 8GB of RAM should give you all the speed you need, smart move to ensure you bought a machine with an optical drive, still plenty of use for one, not the least of which is installing previously bought software.

I run a couple of machines using Windows 8.1 as the operating system, without major drama, the biggest problem is getting rid of the bloatware it comes loaded with.

My wife, an Apple user is always using one of my Microsoft machines to carry out tasks or send attachments the Apple device does not support. smile