notes from abroad

After some long and hard thinking, I’ve decided to do the unthinkable. I’ve decided to -gasp- leave my laptop at home for the summer.

If you know me at all, your first reaction will likely be along the lines of “WHAT!??!?!??!?!!?” followed by all sorts of visions of me going through some sort of hardcore rehab-esque withdrawal. Yeah, I’ve had those same visions. But in the end I decided that I really don’t need a laptop. For the most part I work in the cloud and while it would be nice to have my trusty MBP around so that I have at least something familiar in my life, it’s big, bulky, expensive, and distracting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “the future”. You know, flying cars, aliens, computers that fit on your contact lens, that sort of stuff. And I realized, hey, those people won’t be carrying around laptops during their European adventures. No siree. They’d take advantage of the new wave of technology. For someone as purportedly tech-savvy as I am, holding myself to the “old” way of connecting to the webs is just dumb. No no, I’m going travel 2.0. Completely mobile and in the cloud.

To translate for you non-geeks: I’m not going to have my own computer. I’m going to save my stuff on the internet or an external hard drive instead of on a personal computer. Laptops are old news.

So here’s my plan for geeking out while in Europe:

Necessary:

• iPhone
• Skype for iPhone (and a $2.95/month skype-to-phone subscription because my gram doesn’t have a computer)
• Canon 40D and lenses that I’ve yet to decide on. It will likely be something like: wide angle, low-light, zoom.
• Nikon FM or Canon AE-1 Program. I haven’t decided which I like better yet.
• Flip Video Ultra (60 min)
• Renew my Flickr Pro subscription that ends July 1.
• 12-in-1 memory card reader so I can handle CF and SD in one (read: download photos from my camera). It’s a tad large, but not worth buying a new one.
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01. Best little 3 year old point and shoot there is.
• Foldable Sony headphones. They’re not nearly as small as ear buds, but at least they’ll stay on my ears.
• A Seagate FreeAgent Go 320 GB Portable External Hard Drive that I will have to purchase

Would be nice:

• An eye-fi explore to geotag my photos (and the CF adapter would be nice too).
• Swap out my current Flip Video for its HD cousin: Flip Video MinoHD, 60 Minutes

I think that’s about it! If I do stick to just this list it means that all I really need to acquire is a portable external HD. The other two things that I don’t have would be fun but I don’t think I’ll end up spending the money on them.

I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty solid list to me. Nice and compact and accomplishes everything I need it to (at least I think. I guess I’ll be finding out the hard way!). I plan to bring a few non-tech items to make up for the things that I would normally have on my laptop like books and a notebook, but that’s it! Cheap and painless. I like it!

…Now I hope I can just stick to this decision and don’t panic at the last minute and sneak my laptop in my backpack…

Tags: Packing, Planning, Tech