One of the problems with overseas travelling, either personal or on business, is that so much 'extra' gear has to be taken along if you want to keep in touch and also take pictures/videos of where you have been.
With luggage restrictions almost universally applied these days, we have had to look at what we take with us as there are real issues with carry-on luggage on all flights.
The 'standard' laptop had to go, as it took up a whole slew of space and weight, and the larger FD-97 and CD-1000 Mavica cameras that we have were also getting to be a problem, especially once you include the extra batteries, charger, cables etc etc.
We do have some PDA's in the family (Compaq Ipaq's) but although they are great for logging on at airports etc., they are not really practical for anything requiring significant input or editing, so although we will take them, they are not the solution.
Last October we picked up a couple of Toshiba Libretto 110CT mini-laptops, one here in the UK and one in the USA. After sorting them out and getting our favourite programmes installed, they have turned out to be quite a useful little tool. Battery life is about 2-1/2 hours with a new battery, and we carry one spare with us plus the charger and the mini docking station which gives a full set of ports. A PCMCIA wireless card and a card reader for the memory sticks gives us all the extra facilities we use while away.
The camera solution was to get one of the Cyber-Shot machines. We settled on a DSC-F717 in the end, takes the same battery as a couple of our other cameras so we can use the same spares and chargers. It is Memory Stick only, which is not a problem as we now have many sticks available, and we can dump them to the laptop each evening. Significantly, the camera is less than half the size of the FD-97 or CD-1000 that we had used before.
To carry all of this stuff we picked up a leather Sony Digicam case on ebay, larger than the big Mavica cases and it takes everything, including the Sony external flash, spare batteries etc etc. The later fabric camera bags are a fair bit lighter, but the leather ones take a lot more punishment and protect the contents better IMO.
We have two, maybe three overseas trips scheduled this year, and we will be able to try it all out 'on the road' as it were.
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web: