Touring with a laptop (or similar)

[mr riff raff]

Planning a longer tour next for next year, like 6-8 weeks.

Anyway, I want something to use for route planning and uploading rides etc. Basically just for accessing the WWW.

I know I can do this on my phone or a tablet, but using an actual keyboard and mouse is so much better, especially for route planning or trying to find accommodation for the night.

Is something like a Chrome book the way to go as they’re relatively cheap?

What do people use on this situation?

[Jdsk]

What type and size of 'phone and tablet have you tried for those tasks?

You can use a keyboard with many tablets.

Will you be camping? And what's your plan for powering whatever you take?

Jonathan

[willem jongman]

A modern smartphone is good enough for me, saves a lot of weight and is more frugal with electricity. I just got myself an OTG cable to connect it to my Garmin. Reports on whether this will let me upload tracks differ.

[mr riff raff]

What type and size of 'phone and tablet have you tried for those tasks?

You can use a keyboard with many tablets.

Will you be camping? And what's your plan for powering whatever you take?

Jonathan

Currently on an iPhone 6. I find the screen too small for accurate mapping.

I had quick look earlier and saw tablets with keyboards.

Camping? No way! I’m using hotel/motel and WiFi.

[Jdsk]

I use a MacBook Air as my portable and it's often in and out of a pannier several times a day. My wife uses an iPad.

But neither of those come with us on tours. They're too heavy and too valuable. And we camp as much as possible. We do take an iPhone and Kindle each and a Garmin Edge 1000.

If you take a laptop I don't think that you're going to have any surprises. I'd choose one that doesn't have a mechanical hard disc. I'd take a cable and lock for it. And remember that you can use that iPhone as an Internet gateway for the laptop.

Jonathan

[bohrsatom]

There isn’t much you can’t do with an iPad these days. The iPad mini weighs just over 300g and you could bring the Apple keyboard which weighs 250g to give you a pretty powerful setup for just over half a kilo.

This will enable you plan rides, upload your activity to strava, edit photos and videos, wrote up the day’s journal....

In the past I used to take a small laptop (ASUS t100) but leave it at home now as the iPad setup is half the weight, easier/faster to charge and much more powerful than an Atom processor based machine

[Psamathe]

There isn’t much you can’t do with an iPad these days. ....

I used an iPad for my 2 month tours, route planning (daily using https://cycle.travel), route downloading, finding camp sites, uploading photos every day, updating personal web site (with routes, photos, etc.), everything.

I was camping most of the time using solar panels as a power source.

Ian

[Psamathe]

Unless I missed it, OP doesn't mention what type of tour. If staying in B&Bs/hotels/houses then plenty of power so one aspect of a laptop is not a problem. But if camping then charging a laptop could become a problem. But that also depends on use e.g. daily quick 5 mins planning tomorrow would not be so challenging as e.g. several hours daily planning, uploading photos, updating web site, maybe some work e-mails need dealing with ...

Question of degree.

Ian

[Stradageek]

Ed Pratt circumnavigated the world in a bit over three years, unsupported, mostly wild camping, carrying all his own gear including a laptop whilst riding a unicycle!

Kit list is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD6JRZzt-vk

[al_yrpal]

Small Chromebook...no brainer. £120 or so

Al

[Paulatic]

Unless I missed it, OP doesn't mention what type of tour.

You did

Camping? No way! I’m using hotel/motel and WiFi.

[djb]

Planning a longer tour next for next year, like 6-8 weeks.

Anyway, I want something to use for route planning and uploading rides etc. Basically just for accessing the WWW.

I know I can do this on my phone or a tablet, but using an actual keyboard and mouse is so much better, especially for route planning or trying to find accommodation for the night.

Is something like a Chrome book the way to go as they’re relatively cheap?

What do people use on this situation?

For some longer trips I ended up choosing a smaller android tablet that was not overly expensive, but the main appeal was that it fits into my ortlieb handlebar bag. Am writing this on it now, 4 years old and used daily.
Probably a 7inch screen, and with basic cover/case thing it fits in the ortlieb. No other padding and survived 5 months of sometimes bumpy tours, three of them.
Re keyboard, if you enjoy writing, this is a big factor. I wrote a blog for two months and at times it was frustratingly slow writing. I've often thought of bringing a Bluetooth keyboard we have, but in the end, the compactness and 300g or whatever of just tablet is nice.
If I were to do another long trip I might consider a chrome book, as you say, low price and still compact---however you would want to make sure you won't be limited to programs you might want, like photo editing or whatever. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that there are limitations with chromebooks.
Easy to find out though.

[Vorpal]

I have often done short tours going to & from cycle conferences or other events. I generally take my laptop along when I do that. I just put it in a pannier, usually in a sleeve or plastic bag to protect against casual spills, rain coming in when I open my pannier, etc.

If I already had something suitable, I probably wouldn't buy something just for the trip, though I guess it's an individual sort of thing whether losing a couple of pounds is worth the expense.

As other have pointed out, one does need to consider power requirements and battery life, though with hotel stays, that is really a factor of how much it will be used between overnight stops. I've only taken a laptop when I was planning on spending at least one night in a hotel, though I might have one or two nights camping before I get there. I have not used my laptop along the way.

[irc]

I have toured with a laptop/netbook before. Going now I would use something like this.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASUS-E210-11 ... 4db9846b8c

I had a similar 32GB version. Problem was not enough hard disc capacity for doing windows updates. I think 64GB minimum for windows 10.

Windows has some advantages over Chromebooks.

Weighs just over 1kg. So a good chunk of my 15Kg base camping load (including 4 panniers). Far nicer to type of for doing a blog. If I wasn't doing a lot of typing, just emails, forums etc I would stick with a smart phone. A laptop is nicer for typing, editing pics etc.

My tours are mostly camping but I rarely had issues with keeping it charged. If I was on a campsite there was power. Otherwise small town libraries cafes, pubs, always happy to let you plug in.

Fits easily in my front left pannier which was my maps and electrics place. I kept it in a memory foam sleeve for an extra bit of protection. Maybe overkill but no weight and I had no laptop issues in 12k miles touring with a laptop.

[Sweep]

mr riffraff, I agree with al (in fact it was al who thankfully first got me into chromebooks) - a chromebook will be ideal for your purposes unless you are looking to do something extraordinary on it, particularly as it seems you will have regular access to mains power and wifi.

I have two chromebooks - one 14-15 inch, the other (on which I'm typing this - 10/11 inch - I barely use the bigger one these days. The smaller one cost me £99 in an offer.

Two points - try to get one that has the option to run android apps - most of the new ones do I think.

Check when security updates stop on the machine you are buying. You can check this from the machine itself if the shop staff are vague.

Chromebooks sync effortlessly with android tabs which is handy.

Despite what folk think there is a lot you can do on them when offline - I even use an offline add-on for mine which allows me to edit gpx files.

Power not necessarily a killer problem - a chromebook can be recharged in not much over an hour for a charge then lasting up to 9 hours or so while you sit in a friendly spoons and actually use it - something of a problem to charge and use a tab at the same time.

They are tough beasts - I use a triple-case system for mine when ramming it in a pannier - it's come to no harm so far.

I see no reason to return to windows.