Of course, we have to have a computer along for the ride.  Since this trip is the first half of my (Bill) sabbatical, the computer is NOT for doing work email.  Instead, it has three purposes:

• Stay in touch with our friends and family via email and this blog.
• Backup and process our photographs.  We’ll post some to the SmugMug site.  In general I think I’ll be doing minor color correction on these and probably some size adjustments.
• Find and book hotels ahead of our travels.

Originally I bought a very small (1.75 lbs) Fujitsu U810 notebook.  Very cute, very small and very portable.  I used it for several weeks and never quite got used to the small keyboard and really, really slow speed.  One of my ideas was to watch some videos on the flight over.  But I could never get this little computer to display them well, due to a lack of processing power.

So, despite the sunk costs, I ‘upgraded’ to a Lenovo ThinkPad X61.  It has a nice full-size keyboard, a dual-core processor, 3 GB of RAM (since I added 2GB) and a big hard disk.  It weighs 3 lbs which I figure I can handle easily enough.

To play DVDs on the flight over and to write DVDs for backups, we’re carrying an LG USB-powered (no power cord!) DVD burner.  Not having a power cord is a big deal.  This drive is more than fast enough while being very light.

The mouse is a Microsoft BlueTooth mouse, which means there is no mouse cord.  On the other hand, it takes two AAA batteries which a regular corded travel mouse does not require.  I went this way to save USB ports when I was planning to use the Fujitsu, which has only one port.

Lastly, I found a very cool device in the Combotronic multi-power charger.  This thing is seriously cool.  It charges and/or powers up to three devices at a time.  So you can power your laptop while chargine your cell phone and iPod.  All from one adaptor.  It comes with ‘tips’ that support a ton of devices including pretty much all laptops, all brands of cell phones as well as cameras, MP3 players, etc.  It will work on US or European power and include plug adaptors for all the usual countries.  And, it’s lighter and smaller than a regular laptop power pack.  It was not cheap, I think I spent almost $200 including a few specialty tips.  But hey, it’s cool and very convenient.

For software:

• Vista Business — came with the laptop, I would have selected Home Premium otherwise
• Photoshop CS3 — for photo processing
• Microsoft Expression Web — for web site maintenance
• Microsoft Office — in case I need Excel or Word

I’m doing all email and blog maintanence using software provided by Dreamhost, the company that hosts the website including the blog.  Email is via Gmail which I am finding, to my surprise, I like a lot.  Dreamhost provides WordPress for blog work; it’s very nice, I’m liking it.

Everything in this post (computer gear) and the previous one (camera gear) goes into one backpack along with an iPod and other random stuff.  We’ll see how long I last carrying all this stuff around!  Of course we are driving for the most part…