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Cheapo journo lightweight laptop
Apparently Apple is going to announce (15th Jan I think) a new low power mini-laptop that uses solid state memory, so I’d hang on to see if that happens…
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If you are really set on small/quick why not go with something nutty like pocket phojo on a PDA. You can shoot straight from your camera to your pda and edit/caption email right away. A 900mhz computer isn’t going to be useful for any serious applications anyway, might as well go super small if you want small and get a proper laptop for proper editing.
As for myself I will stick with my four year old laptop as I don’t need anything edited that quickly… (and can’t afford anything else)
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No battery needed.
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It’s $400 if you are not under 18 and lives in Uruguay, through the Buy One Give One deal with OLPC. The OLPC use some weird LCD screen that I have to see B4 I’ll buy one. I haven’t heard anything about anyone installing Photoshop or GIMP on it, so I’ll wait.
Have heard bit of rumors about people installing Photoshop/GIMP on to the EeePC, but I’ll wait till my current laptop breaks before I shell out cash for one.
As for a Mac., don’t think i could afford one. Think they are just over priced, and prob. less support in a 3rd world environment, if things need fixing.
It’ll be nice to have a small laptop, so you can file pictures on the fly.
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As already mentioned. I’m waiting till the 15th to see what apple comes up with.
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i’ve been looking at the specs for the eee for a while to travel with w/ a pair of usb hard drives.
cheaper and holds more than 2 p5000s.
(if anyone can find a smaller/inexpensive device that can read a cf/sd card and dump on to a standard portable usb hd let me know…)
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Edward,
Try this “stupid” Delkin USB Bridge thing… :-)
http://www.delkin.com/products/connect/usbbridge/
It’s a bit slow(USB1), and picky on the type of device it can interact with… or get one of those HD base MP3 players that has the USB Host feature
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Marry Linux to a 900Mhz computer and you can have a good performer. Unfortunately, Photoshop isn’t available for this OS…
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Anyone know if that Belkin Bridge is compatable with Macs? The site is vague (it says “Windows iPods”). Also – does anyone know if you can use these devices on old iPods, put in storage mode (mine is a pre-video, generation 3. I know, I know, I’m ancient…)?
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I used the Asus eee on my last run through Afghanistan – it’s not bad at all, but you would not want it as your primary computer. I used it as an internet terminal – email, IM, websurfing, etc – and for that, all good, and the size and weight is great. I wouldn’t expect it to be much use for photoshop, even if you did install windows on it, but should work fine to transfer data from cards to an external hard drive. Keyboard is a bit cramped also, so serious wordprocessing is going to induce carpal tunnel syndrome real fast. It comes loaded with freeware for web browsing, IM, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, etc, and if nothing else, shows that most people can live just fine without windows or mac OS.
another option that I haven’t tried is Intel’s rival to the OLPC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classmate_PC
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I miss the old Psion 5MX.
Teru, are the keys on the Asus smaller than on the Psion?
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Teru: Photoshop maybe a little too heavy to be putting onto the eeePC, and considering that you have to put Windows on it first. just too much work. Installing an earlier(& not so bloated) version of PS may be another alternative for some people that need to edit on the fly.
You should see if you can put GIMP on to the eeePC and see how it works…this guy did (http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2007/12/eeepc-the-photographers-friend/) and sounds it ran fairly OKay.
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This guy has been doing all sorts of crazy stuff with his eepc.
http://eeesite.net/
Also look here:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/
Lots of good information.
Personally i like the standard, plastic bodied MacBook. You can get some real deals on a previous generation model. The main difference usually is clock speed, but you can save some serious cash. Also look at the refurb section on the Apple Store site.
Feli
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That thing is beautiful but far from cheap. ~$1800 and $3100
I would much rather have a mac book pro, much more useful and not “that” much bigger.
A lot of the bulk of carrying a laptop is padding.
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Yes, the Macbook Air is stupid for photographers. Too thin, it will break, the 13.3" is about 2-3" too big for comfortable carrying (I use a 8.9" PC and it’s great, the 12" powerbook was great too, it fit into your domke), doesn’t even have A FIREWIRE port – what the damn were they thinking?!?
Give us the 12" powerbook back!
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Oh, don’t forget that the Air only has one USB port and no WiFi. Nice huh?
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The Air has 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
No Firewire blows, but most cameras are USB anyway…
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All that stupid money for a 3lb brick with just one USB2 port and no firewire 400 or 800, no CD/ DVD, no Ethernet, no card slots, no modem? Really? They should call it Hot Air.
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I vote for the garden variety MacBook. All the ports you need, optical drive and very tough. I beat my old iBook senseless and it just kept on going. The MacBook is also at least $500 cheaper.
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The Air’s HD is only 80 gigs, I believe. One USB, no optical drive, and who knows about it’s battery. Lightweight.
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Battery? Forget about the stupid battery. Can’t even crack the Hot Air open to get at its hard drive, memory or the battery. Smart, huh? Basically a 13 inch, 80gb iPod. Hope it crashes and burns so they stop foisting this type of extreme built in obsolescence on us.
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I bought a HP NC4010 1.6GHz P4, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD for £400 second hand on ebay about 3 years ago and it’s served me well. I see they are going for about £150 now, no doubt much much less state side. 12.1" screen and enough power and battery life for whatever you need.
Cheers
Tom
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Don’t think Walt Mossberg’s review of the Eee PC will make anyone stupidly rush out to get one.
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Wish the Air is the size of the Asus Eee. I don’t really care about the Optical drive; rarely use the drive on my Macbook. Don’t care about not being to work on the insides of the machine; rather have a well built well sealed machine that can take a knocking.
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All I wanted was an Intel powered version of the old 12 inch Powerbook G4.
That’s it. Throw in a LED backlight display and I would have been as happy as a clam.
But nooo. Instead ‘Dear Leader’ went off to la-la land and after two years came up with a MacBook that looks like it got run over by a steamroller. I may only weigh 3lbs and be a half inch thick, but it’s still as big as a regular laptop with half the features.
Thanks Steve!
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Jobs is only trying to keep the yuppies and trusties happy, not create anything practical for journos. After all, how many 4 wheel drives do you know that are any good off road? Gear for fashion victims and weekend warriors is all that is.
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Well, look at it like this. Some 13 year old kid in Finland has probably already got Mac OS X running on an Eee PC, that will only set you back less than $500 clams US (about 28 Euro) and fits in a Domke F6.
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Eee PC is now $300 and I already made a stupid post above about an American kid running OS X on it.
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The problem w the Eee PC is fixed 512MB RAM. Not enough to run PShop, no matter what OS you’re using. Too bad… I’d like something that size/price, w/Mac OSX, and a “huey-able” screen…
Greg
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Hmmmmmm. The Lenovo X300 is the go. Probably will run OS X very nicely. Just like the IBM Thinkpad…
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Looks like you can upgrade the memory on the Eee PC to 2GB. There is a standard DDR2 RAM slot on the bottom.
It also has an SD slot on the side for ‘mass storage’.
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So the stupid little Eee will soon be able to use a 32 GB SD card for ‘mass storage’. Sweet.
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samsung has a new product out that is somewhere between the epson card reader/storage device that came out a few years ago, but it runs windows, with a blackberry style keypad and touch screen, so you could caption and run photomechanic/photoshop. it even has a built in compact flash slot! can’t remember the name of it for the life of me, but it’s definitely samsung….
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Q1? Lovely, but too rich for my stupid bank.
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Anyone used a thing like this Q1? Or something simular?
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I’ve been using the Asus EEE pc for 3 months now. It is more than adequate for anything i might need while on assignment. It comes with 512 ram memory, but you can upgrade to 1 GB or even 2 GB.
I am using a USB powered external Hard Drive on which I have installed Photoshop CS2. (previously I had replaced the Linux with XP) It works just fine. You can rapidly open a bunch of images, crop, resize, levels and transmit. That’s all you could want from such a lightweight, small notebook.
I don’t use it for final processing, not because it is too slow, but because of the display. For once, it’s a LCD (which I never trust) and it’s too small to make fine adjustments to any image.
So.. that’s my 2 cents..
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Can you process HD video on these things?
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The stupidly simple answer is no.
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Well, it’s certainly not in the ‘cheap’ category, but it does bring us back to the 12" Powerbook/iBook days, this with only a 13" screen, it’s a Mac and it’s touch pad-based w/o a keyboard.
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook
Has anyone used one yet? I believe they just started shipping awhile back. But boy are they pricey!!!
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If money were no stupid object, I’d get the Shift:
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Yeah, well, show me a Shift sized toy with equal muscle, without Vista, and I’ll be stupidly all over it.
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Yo Stoop, you’re getting stoopider by the day. You already posted this vid!!!
THat HP looks pretty on sweet for the price and size.
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Thought I’d stupidly repost it along with the unboxing link. Agree on the HP, very sweet. There is now a huge, 9 inch hole in the Mac laptop lineup.
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I am quite happy with my 4 year old JVC branded japanese Asus/Victor MP-XP731. 1Ghz Pentium M, 8.9" screen, under 1kg. Added 1GB ram, bigger and faster HDD, and it runs photoshop quite well for working with 1dmkIII jpegs. About the same size as a hardcover book. And it’s four years old. Even gotta Firewire! Got it quite cheap used too. Only bad thing is it can’t run hacked OS X with full resolution (1024×600) because of unsupported (too old) graphics chipset. Funny how the new ultraportables have still about the same specs (~1Ghz or less CPU), of course at a cheaper price than this one had been when new. When it stops working I hope there will be similar one with dual core cpu and same small size.
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Four years old but it’s still too rich for my stupidly cheapo budget.
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Well I am looking forward to the new Asus :-)
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So who’s using of these for their daily work?
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I recently picked up one of those MSI Wind machines.
1.6Ghz Atom CPU
80GB drive
1 GB RAM (needs to be bumped to at least 2GB)
8.9 inch LED backlight screen
2 pounds
A real keyboard
279 pounds sterling
So, far it’s stupid (for anyone over 25, that means ’good’).
Currently I’m running Windoze XP, but apparently you can get OS X running on it without much trouble.
It will also run Linux, but obviously none of the software we need runs on that.
It came with a 3 cell battery, which gives you about 2.5 hours of life if you don’t tax the machine too much.
You can get a 6 cell version for a little more $$$.
Apparently it runs at 800 mhz on battery power and at 1.6ghz, when plugged in. There is a way to force it to run at 1.6Ghz when on battery power, but I need to figure out how to get stupid Windoze to do that (and this time I do mean ‘stupid’, as in ’stupid’).
Plugged in it’s quite zippy. I worked on a 5k, 16bit scan with it and while it wasn’t as fast as my MacBook Pro, it was much, much faster than any G4 powered Mac I have ever used. This really could work out well. I’m going to build a 2.5 inch mirrored RAID drive for it, that I can take on the road for image storage, review and basic editing. The trackpad works, but is mediocre. I picked up a miniature mouse for $10 bucks and it’s perfect.
If I was a scribbler and not a shooter this would be the perfect road machine. I weighs nothing, is as big as a hardcover book and has plenty of power and connections to do pretty much anything you want. The only thing that is missing is Bluetooth and you can add that via the USB port. SKYPE voice and video works like a charm. I can;t believe this machine is as good as it is and costs as little as it does.
My only suggestions would be:
-Dual core ATOM chip (apparently coming soon…)
- 2-4 GB RAM (upgradeable)
- Bump screen resolution from 1200×600 to 1200×800 (some programs won’t open unless you have a min. of 800 pixels in height)
- Better battery, but the 6 cell should take care of that
-OS X (apparently can be installed)
I’m buying a DSLR around Photokina, so I haven’t been able to test NX2 or similar on it. I’m convinced that NX2 etc will bring it to it’s knees.
But something like Photomechanic should run without much trouble…
(yes, I’m still one of those silly shooter still shooting stupid old Tri-X (stupid as in good))
Stupidly yours,
Feli
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Participants
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Bill Putnam
multi-media photojog
(Scanning my life.)
Rockport, Maine
,
United States
(
IAD
)
En route to
Washington, D.C.
(ETA: Aug 17 2008)
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