Gordon Woolf's Blog

What's best for travelling?

My most recent trip away was three days by car and for the first time I took my 3kg+ laptop. Usually I travel with what was almost the first of the netbooks, the eeePC 701.

So how do they compare?

Travelling by car, the hefty laptop is more convenient and there can be everything available that you'd expect at home. It'll run Windows if that's what you run at home - in fact it can be your main computer even at home, so you know how to do everything.

The down side is the weight (it would have accounted for half the total baggage for one allowed on our recent trip by air over Lake Eyre, and once you are out of the cities you realise the effect of all your regular internet checks for things like desktop gadgets (weather, shares, exchange rate etc) add to slowing up your 2G mail and other web downloads. It may be a good idea to set up a specific "user" for travelling.

So, for air, train etc I'll still go for the little netbook. Yes, the screen is too small (it is one of the original 7" screens, there are 10" ones now which would be better) but it weighs just over 900g or 1200g with mini-mouse, charger and modem and it is a third the size of the laptop.

I'm tempted by a tablet, but so far it is only temptation - and there's that additional benefit in favour of the netbook: it cost $500 but that's when they were something new and most of that value has been written off over the years. I could replace it for around $250 so its loss or damage isn't going to hit me hard (though its replacement could just possibly be a Galaxy if I have to make a decision while travelling and a store has one).

As to wireless availability, my experiences in central Australia late in 2010 still appear to be current. Something simpler such as a netbook with Linux will get and send email faster than most laptops but I can't yet compare that to a tablet, especially one of the cheaper ones running the Android OS. I never like throwing out something that is still working well, so for the time being my almost ancient netbook will be my main means of communication when away from home and office.

On this latest trip the wireless connection via our second major national carrier was excruciatingly slow - and the motel's wifi, running from a landline link, was not much faster. Perhaps when the networks get better outside of the capital cities I will give way to the tablet temptation.

A reminder of air travel as it should be

I thought that I did not like air travel. But a few weeks ago Gwen and I took a few days for a holiday trip over Lake Eyre, Australia's inland sea which is usually just salt, but which has been filled now for two years running.

I was fortunate to see an advertisement that a tiny air-travel business (four planes and a helicopter) were running a three-day two-night tour from Tooradin airfield, 20-minutes’ drive from home.

We drove in to the airfield, up to the office, carried our bag in where we were met by the pilot who took the bag, weighed it and took it out to the plane, an 8-passenger Piper Chieftain, sitting ready the other side of a fence you could have stepped over. We were introduced by his wife to the other passengers, then led back to our cars to drive to the "secure" area for them on the other side of the hanger. We ambled back across the tarmac, had a coffee and the pilot said it was time to get going.

Before we boarded the pilot ran through the usual safety preamble with the lifejacket (which still has to be done even though most of our trip was over desert, admittedly somewhat wet desert, then it was an invitation to sit where we liked and the lolly jar was handed around.

One of the "towns" we landed at, William Creek, has a permanent population of 2 and is on the Oodnadatta track, a "road" definitely more deserving of the description "track". The pilot apologised that he could no longer taxi to the back door of the pub, so we'd have to walk the last 50 yards. A sign at the sealed airstrip's parking area says to pay the $25 landing fee ($30 for ours as it had two engines) at the hotel bar.

As might be expected when you are visitng small towns in what really is the Outback, mobile phone and wireless broadband coverage was somewhat patchy (at Lyndhurst we were told you could get a connection on Telstra or Optus on a small hill a kilometre along the road) but even the most deserted pubs offer landline or satellite connections and the Lyndhurst Hotel even had an inhouse computer repair service advertised on the noticeboard).

Incidentally we can thoroughly recommend the hamburgers at William Creek which need a couple of kebab sticks to hold them together. Only about four or five aircraft landed for lunch that day but our pilot told us it is not uncommon to have 20.

So it is not air travel which is the problem, it's large airports.