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Backpacking With a Laptop is a Pain

July 15th, 2008 Posted in Long-term travel, Travel gear, Work/Life/Travel Balance

I have caught some heat over the years from gadget freaks by saying any traveler not working from the road is better off leaving their laptop at home. It’s a pain in so many ways and a real burden having the extra weight, cords, and adapters, not to mention the security risk.

Backing me up is this comprehensive post from the Lifehacker blog: Getting things done traveling through Southeast Asia. The conclusion says it all.

“If I had to do the trip over again (and I hope I do), I would have definitely left my laptop behind, and opted instead for a thumb drive loaded with portable apps (like Firefox with my extensions and bookmarks and portable IrfanView for captioning photos). I would’ve brought several more roomy flash drives for temporarily offloading photos from my digital camera memory cards in between DVD burns. That would’ve been a lot lighter and easier. Also, I would’ve carried rain gear. And toilet paper.”

You can carry most of what you need on a USB thumb drive and you can get software (like Roboform or Keypass) that will keep all your passwords secure at an Internet cafe. Or you can have enough storage for several years’ worth of photos by carrying a portable, lightweight hard drive. You can access Skype at most Internet cafes or you can carry the application on a thumb drive or hard drive as well for places that don’t have it installed. Now you can even get Skype Voicemail so your relatives can leave you a message. Take along a memory card reader and you can upload photos from any cafe as well. No muss, no fuss.

“Before I arrived, I was sure that once my laptop-less travel companions saw how cool it was to download photos whenever and wherever you wanted, they’d wish they had a laptop, too. Not true—in the end, when I asked them if they had the lightest laptop in the world, like the MacBook Air, they both said they wouldn’t carry it with them. It’s a luxury item, even when you’re on the road that long, and computers are widely available and cheap to use at internet cafes.”

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  1. 9 Responses to “Backpacking With a Laptop is a Pain”

  2. By bryan in san francisco on Jul 15, 2008

    A lot of those apps have web-based equivalents, so you don’t even need to bring them along. Just log into your account next time you’re online.

  3. By jamie on Jul 16, 2008

    Forget backpacking, even just traveling with a laptop is a pain.

    Free wifi? Yes, in the lobby. Free wifi in your room? Kind of (unless your room is above the second floor).

    You’ll find yourself at internet cafes anyway (just don’t expect to type fast on those damn international Querty keyboards).

  4. By Ron Mader on Jul 17, 2008

    Brilliant essay. I am adding this to my delicious account.

    I am thinking ahead to October workshops in Ecuador and the ONLY reason I want to take my laptop is to edit video. Hmmmm, I wonder if there are some alternatives.

  5. By Derek on Jul 21, 2008

    I’m over 10 months into a one year RTW trip and have to say that traveling with a laptop has been a FANTASTIC experience for me for several reasons:

    1. I hate Internet cafes. Many are cramped, hot, dark and have computers with very different and frustrating keyboards (which are often broken - stuck keys, missing keys, etc.). I go to lengths to avoid them. If you can’t find a wifi connection, most Internet cafe will allow you to plug in your laptop at the cafe.

    2. Wifi is widely available. We’ve been able to get wifi (in most cases, for free) almost everywhere around the globe. Thus, we can sit in a restaurant, bar or our hotel room and comfortably be online.

    3. Uploading and being able to edit (and add captions to) photos and videos while on the road is invaluable. Sure, there are alternative ways to store your photos and videos but you can’t edit them without being on a computer (which means many hours in a despised Internet cafe).

    4. Being able to type e-mails and work on your blog (to the extent you have one) while offline makes a huge difference. I type all my e-mails and blog entries (with related photos and videos) offline (usually at night in my hotel room or while having a drink at a bar). When I do get online (either via wifi or at an Internet cafe), I simply upload everything and am off in a just a few minutes.

    5. Pain of carrying laptop. It only weighs about 4 pounds and has never been an issue for me. Sure, it’s 4 pounds more than not carrying a laptop, but it’s worth it. As far as security goes, I take several measures to backup the data on my laptop so if something does happen, I’m covered.

    In summary, I can’t imagine traveling long term without a laptop - ESPECIALLY if you have a travel blog or are into photography.

    Just some thoughts…

    Derek
    http://www.oneyearonearth.com

  6. By tim on Jul 21, 2008

    Hi Derek–nice to hear from you! Looks like your trip has been going great. I see your point, but I think your fine blog is far beyond what most travelers aspire to post while on the road and you’re a photography buff carrying lots of SLR gear. So different priorities than the average backpacker setting out to just see the world rather than document the world. As a person who carries a laptop more often than not–because I have to for work–the times I go without one feel like trips without a ball and chain.

    I also personally know three people now who have had one stolen while traveling. A lot of coin to be out even if you have backed up everything. But for some it’s obviously worth the risk and the extra four pounds (plus accessories).

    Editor’s note: I met with Derek and Shanna before they took off on their round-the-world journey. Here’s a post on the travel gear they were packing.

  7. By Brian on Sep 13, 2008

    As someone who has traveled without a laptop and tried the working out of a pen drive I have to say that it’s not nearly as great as you would think. It all comes down to one thing…viruses. Using a usb stick in net cafes is the computer equivalent of having regular orgies with nasty druggie crack hos….you WILL catch something.

    Plan on backing up every document you use to an online repository preferably every time you edit it. Plan on having data and programs start disappearing and or being corrupted. Whole folders will just disappear overnight. Then plan on a day or so of work trying to find a clean computer to wipe your drive and reinstall everything and restore from backups. And remember to hold shift while you plug in to stop autorun from infecting your rare and precious clean computer. Than plan on having to do it all again every 3 to 5 weeks. Heck even my camera’s SD card got viruses! And I only plugged it in like once a month or so to backup my pics. Eventually I stopped keeping data on the pen drive and just used it to hold programs so I didn’t have to download and install them every time. Download, edit, upload. It worked, sort of.

    If you really do want to use a pen drive, another option is to get one of those mini linux distros on it and only use it when you can boot from your pen drive to avoid the machine’s infested windows install. Of course that’s a pain, but it’s reliable. I’ve tried it, but I just didn’t have the discipline to mess around restarting, changing BIOS settings, change computers when necessary, to find one I could get to boot off my drive. Also, it kinda freaks out a lot of the cafe owners/staff if they “catch” you doing it.

    If you need more than the google/yahoo online tools allow then a laptop is definitely the way to go in my opinion. I plan on getting one of the new netbooks for next trip. $350, 2lbs, 2.5 hours battery life, about the size of a guidebook. Heck I’d be half tempted to dump the guidebook, and my paperbacks for that matter, in favor of ebooks.

  8. By tim on Sep 14, 2008

    Brian, I’ve been using the same USB sticks for two years (one has all the passwords encrypted), through a dozen countries, with no problems. Meanwhile, my laptop has gotten infected and hacked several times from WiFi hotspots. There are risks no matter what, so to me it comes down to whether you need it for work or not. Mine is under 3 pounds, but I still leave it home when I’m traveling for pleasure and just burn photo CDs at a shop, which you can find anywhere.

  9. By Brian on Sep 17, 2008

    Wow two years without problems is pretty impressive! Wonder if it makes a difference where you are. For the record I was in SE Asia. I’d say that many or maybe even most cafe computers were infected. I wasn’t aware that wifi was any riskier than any other internet connection, at least as far as viruses are concerned. I traveled with two people with laptops and I didn’t hear of them getting viruses, though I guess I didn’t ask. Guess I’ll find out more for myself next trip.

  10. By tim on Sep 21, 2008

    The problem with WiFi is (from what I hear), it’s pretty easy for someone to intercept your communication and grab your log-in info from the transmission or the cookie on your laptop. So logging onto bank accounts would not be wise. Almost every business traveler I know has been compromised at some point. In my case, someone hacked into this blog and deposited all kinds of crap code in the template. Wordpress has gotten more secure since, but it was ugly. The only solution, from what I can tell, is to have some kind of VPN and/or change your passwords constantly.

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