What laptop do you travel with?

My MacBookPro has not proved to be particularly reliabe so far - the Jury's out. On the other hand, both my G4 12" Powrbooks have run flawlessly, although one doesn't like writing DVDs on boat with motor vibration - who can blame it. For travel I'll stick with the 12" and a 60Gig iPod for additional back up (since it too appears to be reliable and very straightforward to use with the Powerbook and is small enough to carry ijn a shirt pocket!).

Bonnie,

I suppose one of each (a PC and a Mac) would be ideal if they want to spend the money, but if it is just for checking email and working on pictures I say go for two PCs. While most people serious about their photography bring their own laptops, many people will be on the machine working on images or even just downloading cards and burning images to disc. We had a PC on the liveaboard I worked on, and it got a lot of use and ABUSE.

People always seemed to love changing the screen saver and your default settings you politely tell them to leave everything as it is during the orientation. People just love to push buttons. To make those computers as simple as possible and dedicated to just email and PS is the best. We had a really cheap setup, that worked great. It is amazing what a $600 HP for example gives you these days. Besides, when someone dumps a cup of coffee all over the laptop, the crew won't blink an eye to replace it.

That is the strength of the eMac. It is built for use in schools. If you dump your lunch on the keyboard (it is going to be on a boat after all!) you just get another keyboard! ...and it is cheap to buy.

Actually Apple have stopped making the eMac. I still challenge anyone to come up with a more elegant, space and cost effective solution than an Intel MacMini with 2GB of memory and a $200 17" flat screen, running both Windows and MacOS, keeping both the PC and Mac people happy. Those doubters should check one out at your local Mac store.

Agree with loftus. Mac mini is the go.

I use an old Fujitsu Lifebook P series, but only for travelling. This one does not get to come out for normal everyday use, however when travelling it is waaay cool because it is tiny and light, the size of a paperback book, only a lot thinner, and fits in the pocket of my camera bag...

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This is actually one of the reasins I made the tongue in cheek Linux comment...

Linux ix killer for machnes that are too "old" for Windows. It is relatively cheap and pretty robust.

I'm using a Mac for my photos but also have a Linux box available.

I was wondering if there is anyone else out there thinking about, trying to ues, or using successfully any flavor of Linux for their photo work?

Mark:

Using Gimp instead of Photoshop or even PSP is possible, but so is making the bricks to build your own house. Of course at the end of the day, you can take solace in the fact that you are somehow more pure than the guys running Windows or Tiger (or whatever predator Apple comes up with next, maybe we can get them to make the future OSs named after sharks). On the other hand getting Photoshop to run under Crossover or something like that really isn't running Linux is it.

Bill

Windows for me....

Pixel Image Editor ( http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12 ) is supposed to be as close to Photoshop as it gets. I have'nt tried it myself, but it's available for a variety of platforms. It's $32.

It has real over-heating problems when the harddisk is being used hard.

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Hey Alex, do you think yours overheats? Check this out:

Yes, the guy is frying an egg on it!

hahaha, like my maxtor externals...

Mac for this guy. Sure it's slower on muscle and graphics but the software I use (particularly FCP which is only Apple) it's the only way to go.

Plus it looks cool and I can be trendy when I want to be.

For the boat I'd use eSATA enclosures with a express PC/34 card for whatever system. Nothing like at least 600GB RAID to help move things along.

MacBookPro - 2ghz, 2gig RAM. I am running Final Cut Studio editing in HDV. All apps are usuable on it (but can slow down when doing some serious crunching). I am very happy with it.

MacBook Pro 17".

Love it. Easy to use, but... and I think this gets overlooked a lot, it is very "scriptable". I use iView MediaPro and can write some cool scripts with AppleScript, plus when I really want to geek-out, I can open a shell and run BSD Unix scripts all day long.

I use PC's for my "day job" (programmer). Ughh. Viruses, spyware, incompatibilities, crappy trial software, crashes, the bloated registry, unexplainable hiccups (ever notice XP just sort of "stop" for a while?). I find it funny how many little balloons and beeps it makes when I pop in a USB drive or other device - ding, balloon, ding, balloon, etc, etc, and then finally you can use the device. Same device on a Mac - plug it in and start using it. And Windoze has the nerve to continuously tell/ask me inane things like "You have unused icons on your desktop blah blah blah...".

My only complaint about my mac at this point is that Photoshop CS2 is not yet a universal (i.e. intel support) app, and so not as fast as it ought to be. But it is usable for now, and Adobe says it is working on it.

Cp