koz

I'm considering buying a netbook, specifically for backing up photos and video as well as web browsing and email while traveling. I have a 12 month old 16.1" notebook which I've taken on a few trips, but it's very heavy so I'd like to get something lighter for an 8 week trip coming up next July. I take a lot of photos while traveling and copy them each night onto my notebook and then make backups onto several USB2 portable hard drives.

Would the transfer rates from USB2 card readers and from my HDD camcorder to the netbook and from the netbook to USB2 HDDs be slower, and if so, much slower than with a notebook?

Are there any netbooks with an Express Card slot? I haven't seen any at the shops I've been to so far. I recently bought an Express Card Compact Flash card adapter and the transfer rates from that to the notebook are much faster than with a USB card reader.

I would buy a netbook with the fastest processor and and as much RAM as possible that I can find, but is it likely to be good enough for these purposes compared with a small notebook?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

soitgoes

Most netbooks have SD card slots, and some have other slots as well.
At least some HP netbooks have expresscard slots.

sc flier

I have an Asus Eee netbook that I got in 2009 just before a big trip. I upgraded it from 1GB to 2GB RAM. It's slow to render photos, but it does the job. It's so much smaller and lighter than my laptop, so excellent for travel. 6 hour battery life for typical use is nice, too.

Downloading photos from my card to the netbook is maybe about 3x slower than if I was using my laptop, but I'm in no hurry in the evening. As long as we remember to do so in the evening, it is no problem. If we forget until we're about ready to leave in the morning, then time becomes an issue. If you have extra memory cards, then you can just use the spare card.

If you plan to actually edit photos and video while on the road, a netbook probably isn't for you. IME, they're too slow for doing much of that.

I'm pretty sure that my Asus has a built-in slot that can accept SD. I can't remember if it accepts any other formats.

cordelli

I have a netbook and love it. But it's way too slow for working with photos when compared to my notebook. The one advantage it has is the SD slot which is way faster than a card reader (and one less thing to carry around), but because the processor is slow and the memory is limited, it's slow, you can't have too many things open without making it even slower, etc.

I still would not give it up, and even with the speed limitation it's lightweight and long battery life sort of make up for it a bit.

Astrophsx

Bought a Dell netbook and converted it into a "hackintosh" for a family member.. which was pretty easy. It was about $250, and can handle photos in iPhoto pretty well. The battery life is pretty bad... usually less than 3 hours.

Braindrain

The battery life on most netbook batteries seem to be around 6-8 hours. Sounds like a super cheapie model.


As for the OP, a netbook will do everything he's asking for perfectly. I bring my netbook on vacation to backup my camera and camcorder pics. It's great. In fact, after transferring every night, I can sort through my pics quickly while it's fresh in my mind.

Another big plus is the long battery life (for most of them, anyways ). I can watch movies through most long-haul flights without plugging it in and don't have fight with the Macbois for plugs in public areas.

The newest Atom processors are dual core (N550?) so they might be better for photo-editing than previous ones. I wouldn't even try video-editing on them.

WillCAD

USB2 is USB2 - data transfer rates should be comparable between netbooks and other portables.

I like where your head is - making backups of those irreplaceable photos. But here are a few thoughts:

1) Never put all your eggs in one basket; don't use a single memory card for your entire trip. Break up your trip pics onto multiple cards, and BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

2) Laptops get lost, hard drives fail and glitch. Backing up on USB thumb drives is not a bad idea, as long as you remember that those drives are magnetic and thus prone to occasional failure, just like memory cards and hard drives. Be careful how you store and transport them; heat and moisture are their enemies. (I prefer to burn mine onto CD or DVD before returning home).

3) Whatever method you choose for your backups, the most important technique to use is separation. More than one copy does you no good if they're all in the same bag, and that bag gets lost, stolen, or damaged. I like to keep a copy on my laptop (which travels in my carry-on), and a burned DVD copy in my checked bag. Whenever I have high-speed internet, I also like to upload copies to an online backup location, giving me double redundancy.

4) Your memory cards and backups are important. Don't leave them in your camera bag (which can be lost or stolen); when staying in a hotel, lock them in your room safe.

koz

Thanks everyone for your replies. I am very cautious with backups and on recent trips over the past few years I have traveled with multiple portable hard drives and have one in my hand luggage, one in my wife's hand luggage and another in our checked luggage. I always transfer from the still camera memory cards and the video camera hard drive every night and then back up to the portable drives each night as well.

I think I will buy a netbook but since we won't be traveling until July I'll wait a few months and see what new models may be released. I won't be using it for photo editing while I'm traveling - just for transferring photos and video each day and backing up, as well as email and web browsing.

ExitRowLegroom

I do tons of photography while traveling, and my current setup is:

HP Netbook
250GB External/Travel Hard Drive
4x 16GB SD cards

I normally never take more than 100GB of photos on trips, so it usually works out that I only need to empty about 2 cards during the trip. However, I save all the cards to the external hard drive at the end of every day. Additionally, I upload JPGS of all the files to my Picasa page. Even though they aren't as easy to edit with, and they are scaled down, god forbid anything did happen, I would at least have backups.

Plus, taking a netbook works wonders. I don't take plugs for charging my phone, iPod, etc...I just bring the USB cords and use the Netbook as a hub for all my electronics.

sc flier

That is an excellent point. I do the same, and it's made things much easier with the need for just 1 power adapter in international destinations and none of the concerns about voltage differences.

USB charges my GPS, too.

However, I do also carry a small plug-in USB outlet that provides a faster charging speed for my phone.

KarlJ

It shouldn't matter if it's "tons" or mere ounces. If it's lost, it's lost.

For me, it's about multiple backup plans and redundancy. I backup to two separate drives on my main machine, two external, and two cloud.

wiredboy10003

I have a friend who does huge multimedia presentations for Fortune 50 companies and insists that it's backed up on three hard drives, each hand carried on a different plane. Maybe overkill, but they feel its important.

cantcliff

Netbook would work fine as a temp solution to store off memory cards, just make sure it's photos you're ok getting lost if it gets stolen.

Slightly offtopic

If you're a bit more technical inclined for the people complaining a bit about speed and usability of their netbook there are a few things you can do that will help immensely.

1.) Swap out the slow, high latency, low throughput mechanical drive for a nice 2.5 inch solid state. Expensive but it breaths a breath of life into the netbook you will not believe.

2.) Get one with at *least* 2gigs of ram. 1gig is too little for any flavor of 7, especially if it's running on a slow harddrive and swapping alot. It likes to swap alot.

3.) If you're really curious, a decent easy to learn linux destro runs amazing on a netbook. You'd better be comfortable trouble shooting your own problems though.