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On the road backup solution? iBook vs Dell mini vs Hyperdrive O ?


proenca

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Hi there,

 

I'm wondering what to do in terms of storage / backup on the road

 

The solutions for around £300 :

 

Used iBook ( I'm huge mac user ) g4 with 80 ish gb drive. Could do backup on the hotel, review files, start organizing the library and even watch movies on the plane :)

 

New dell mini, only 8gb drive so I'll have to lug a external disk. Same as above - I don't have a clue how an older ibook or MacBook compares to an intel atom CPU

 

Hyperdive - smaller but can't it read dng files ? Without writing dng + JPEG ?

 

Buy 10 more SD extreme 4gb and forget about the laptop business

 

I'm really tempted by the old ibook but today in the airport saw those dells and while unfortunatly they will have windows, they are new and seem well put

 

Tell me your thoughts

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I purchased the Epson P-2000 when it came out for a mobile backup solution, thinking I would also use it to review images. It worked fine for the RD-1 that I owned before the M8 came out, so no DNG issues. What I found was I did very little reviewing, and basically was just using it so I could offload my cards. A better solution, buy more cards when they are on sale. Now I use cards like rolls of film, and develop them when I return home.

 

If there are other needs, like watching movies, staying connected to the internet, or reviewing photos, then a real laptop is a better choice. The netbooks are functional, but slow, and have little RAM. Lenovo has their S10 with a 160 GB disk and user-upgradeable ram to 2 GB, but by the time you add an optical drive for software installation, upgrade the RAM, etc, you're well over your target budget. If you use Mac, you also have your photo software for that platform, and the Dell or Lenovo would require more expenditures for software.

 

I hate to say it, but it all depends on what you want to do with it and what your shooting workflow is.

 

Eric

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Go to the HP site and look at the 10" HP Mini 1000 - I got this for $399 ... You can upgrade is to a 60gb drive for $55 :)

 

It has a built in SD slot, wifi and cam... (Oh and make sure you get the 10" display and not the 8" option)

 

Great for travel,,, I tricked it out with Firefox, Google's Picasa (Which views .dng's) and Skype to call Mom

 

hp-mini-1000.jpg

hp-mini-1000-image-6.jpg

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I went for the Hyperdrive colorspace. By the way i have a MacBook too.

I found my Hyperdrive much more convenient to be used "on the road". The batteries last more than those of the Mac, I didn't consider the netbook a comfortable solution to me(my personal need), mainly because I didn't consider it a real computer and much of a hassle when carryin' the extra size.When I need to handle or PP pictures on the road, I take the Macbook.

When, as the OP asked, I need a "backup solution" the Hyperdrive is unbeatable! And now, mine has got a 400gb hard drive inside (for less than 90€ more) :)

I always wondered that to me: often I saw threads and discussions regarding the extra size of a summilux towards a summicron, and then?:confused:

 

I'm considering to buy a second Hyperdrive as well, as to have a second backup solution on the road. How many times I risked to loose a bag, or it actually happened? What if that bag was the one with my backup storage inside? I could carry an hyperdrive in my pocket, and the other on the bag. :cool:

 

my2cents

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haha this is odd...

I just, half an hour ago, lost a months work :eek:

 

As the incident occured on a network drive which is regularly backed-up in my company, I have good hoop the most vital information will return and just some edits may be gone. But the PC was almost flying through the window...

 

what happend was I was moving a directory around on the network drive. Then I thought "no, this is wrong" and did ctl-z which is undo...yes it did undo, but it did not restore to the previoous state. It just deleted the moved directory from its wrong place and then it was gone (as it was a networkdrive it will not go to the wastbasket)...long live windows :mad:

 

So you see how important regular back-ups are. Loosing your data is just one wrong key-click away.

 

Personally I have a bulk (6 or 7) of very, very cheap 2G cards. I too use cards as film but also have a imagetank to store the data to be safe. I make sure I have at least one copy of the files at any time.

 

It is funny you know...I lived though the development of storage space, started with 160K floppies for my apple II. When the 100M disks came we thought: "no way we get that full", then again at 1G and now again at 1T :) But I realize the back-up of my PC is about 500G (I do regular clean-ups) so I soon have to switch to 1 or 1,5T

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I use an Acer Aspire One. In the UK it's under £300 with Windows XP installed. There is a cheaper Linux version but that will not run Lightroom. It is small, light and has a built in SD card slot: no need for an external card reader. Mine has a 160GB hard drive, so it has plenty of storage space. All this for the same sort of money as a card reader/hard drive/screen gizmo.

 

The only real downside is that battery life is not great: really no more than two hours.

 

Couple this with a stack of SD cards and my photos can exist in two seperate places until I get home.

 

Perfect.

 

John

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I use an Archos 5 with a mini dock. This gives me a smaller solution than even a netbook and also allows web browsing, movie watching and even pdf book reading.

 

An added bonus is it reads the jpg files embeded in DNG raw files (even though Archos don't claim this)

 

 

Simon

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