I have a Dell mini also. Great to travel with riding or flying. My job requires me to check reports daily and send necessary e-mails. I don't like working with smart phones and such. The mini is great, but MS Office takes up a lot of hard drive space. I used velcro to secure an external hard drive to the top of the laptop cover. It is always there and plugged in. Built in wireless is great. Look for a public library or local real estate office for free wifi. Can even download to my GPS device. Transfer photos from camera and video camera, check weather....

Just make sure to pack it well. T-shirts are fine.

 

Ditto on the Dell D400. I have that as one of my small laptops and works great. I also had an Acer, forget the model as I gave it to my son but it had about an 8" screen. Both quite compact and do anything you should need for travel. Both have XP operating system but while as mentioned above the Dell has a P3 the Acer has an Atom processor I had no troubles with. At home I have an old E machines desktop but primarily use my Dell Inspiron running Vista with a 17" screen.

 

I am ashamed to say I've traveled with my laptop and have never had a problem with connection at hotel or wireless connections. OMG! I'm a poseur!

 

LOL- if your reading this post - then YOU are into computers - they are just a tool like anything else you might carry in your tool kit... Being able to track a storm I was sitting in the middle of and knowing what direction it was moving and how long I needed to wait - made me a believer.... Plus, being on the road for weeks at a time, I like to track my c/c for fraud... Last April - while on the road - someone at a motel grab my number and was having fun... no problems with c/c - just caught it faster because I was keeping an eye out... When we travel - we are on the road for weeks at a time... and I use a c/c for everything... thats a lot of chances for the bad guys to get your number and it does happen..

I retired May 08 - that day I took my watch off - wife and I had fun asking each other what day it was and the time.. Now we just stick to what month it is... who cares, we just enjoy life.

 

This is the 4th season with this Acer Notebook - probably carried about 70,000 miles so far. No problems - just stuff it between clothes in the Tour Pack. Most motels have wireless so can get email, check the weather, sometimes call with Skype and plan the next day. Mapsource for GPS -easy to update.

The new small computers are of interest to me but would not want to loose any functionality of a computer. Also, concerned about the small screen. May just get another notebook when this one packs it in.

 

Is this the truth, I carry a small dell and it's been great, but both my kids have the new I-Phones and it's the $hit you can do with them is crazy. However I also know a few people that use their lap top to monitor their fuel management system. I'm kinda a set them and forget them as long as the bike is performing correctly....but boys will be boys. I think I saw Phil M at a rally adjust his at least 4 times???

The extra add ons you can do with the I-Phone are something else from GPS, Police scanners radar traps amd all sorts of stuff. It's a must have for a guy that travels a lot. O'ya movie download too!

 

I recently bought an ASUS notebook to use on my trips; its small, lightweight and has 9 1/2 battery life. At around $300.00 it's hard to beat. www.asus.com.

 

I carry my HP workstation laptop. I also carry a extended battery and a WAN card. In general, if there is a cell signal, I can, if desired, get on-line. I carry this in my laptop travel case. That case has seen 100K+ air miles and at least 15K road miles.

I am a geek what can I say. I like having my laptop and being connected.
...gene

 

I wanted to go with the Iphone then found that ontop of my service, I had to pay $30 for the Iphone items... thats $360 a year - My baby laptop cost me $230 at costco and all I really want my phone to do is call..

 

***WARNING*** Never pack the laptop in the tourpack with the ice chest. Taking 3 weeks off my work required me to take my laptop. I did, put it in two plastic bags in case it rained but didn't really think about a small ice chest I had in the tourpack with water in it. Well it leaked and somehow the water made it in the double tied plastic bags and made a nice swimming pool for the laptop to sit in....just to ensure that it got completely wet. Good thing is my work never asks me to take a laptop with me...forgot to mention to them about the ice chest.