Notebook or Ultra Book for travel

[XtJerry]

I need something to act as a go-between between my camera and a portable external drive.   I am used to having my images saved on two memory cards and before that had an Epson P series to store back up files.  I have a slug of SD cards and do not erase until home and images are on the computer.

 

Are there any dependable reader hard drive units like the old Epson P series?

 

Any thoughts for a dependable compact solution to back up my image when traveling without using the cloud?

 

Jerry

[milandro]

Why not using a laptop with a solid state memory ? It’s not much bigger or heavier than a decent tablet and would be including wi-fi capability to directly store all the pics. I’ve never lost any pics on card that you can download each evening ( if you are really obsessing you can put one copy on the laptop and one on a solids tate disk or stick).

 

But one can really make his life as difficult and complicate and one wishes these days, and if you are a victim of obsessive compulsive disorders ( we all have some of this) in this uncertain times.

[Warwick]

I have the new MacBook - it's really not much bigger than my iPad, but it has 500gb of storage. I'd recommend it!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[milandro]

certainly OCD satisfied 

[XtJerry]

Milandro with a degree in psychology. a degree in administration and training in engineering, I understand both redundancy and OCD.  I don't have OCD, but I do believe in redundancy.  Lap tops are more vulnerable to theft that a stashed modern external drive.  I don't like spending thousands of dollars for photography trip and coming home empty handed.  In the film era I lost 80 rolls of 36 exposure negatives of a 10 week photography trip through Europe to a thief in Paris.  I have also had one memory card go sour after copying the images off.  I use only Lexar and Sandisk from B&H.  Also I shoot in raw.   Sh*t happens.

[Tikcus]

i picked up a Lenovo yogo 3

intel core m 5 series, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Windows 8.1 (upgraded to 10) 11" Full HD 10 point multi touch screen (folds into tablet)

 

Weighs not a lot more than a similar size tablet

 

I use it for lightroom and photoshop when on the go. (as well as office and web browsing)

 

More than capable as long as you are prepared to wait occasionally

[Pierre]

Dell XPS 13 : 13" inch borderless screen in the body of a 11" notebook. Faster, lighter, less expensive that a Macbook Air 13". And the screen is QHD+ (3200x1800), very sharp and useful for editing photos.

[quincy]

unfortunately the xps 13 has an automatic content-dependent brightness control that cannot be deactivated at the moment, and it remains to be seen if dell will deliver a software update for this issue.

[darknj]

Asus has a nice ultrabook with it's UX303/305 series, it's 13.3" screen size along expendable RAM and can easily swap SSD from the system, CPU i5 to i7, can have a dedicated GPU, touchscreen and tri/quand HD screen, about 1.5kg power cable included and less than 2cm thickness. The drawback is on the screen tho, it HAS to be calibrated, from the factory settings, it has a nasty yellow tint.

 

I got one which I take out with me on events where I need to be able to process the picture quickly and make small adjustments on the raws before uploading them to different galleries.

[Abner D]

If you don't really need a laptop, maybe a wireless card reader would be handy for you.

 

google for Kingston Mobilelite G2 wireless card reader, it can read a card and copy the files to external hdd. You can control it and preview the photos with your android or ios smartphone via wifi. Very versatile IMO.

[darknj]

[...]Kingston Mobilelite G2 wireless card reader, it can read a card and copy the files to external hdd.[...]

 

Not that one, it's just a fancy card ready with slow WiFi module inside that cost 5 times the price of a decent cabled card reader. The speed of the Mobilelite G2 is incredibly slow, takes close of 20 min to copy over 10Gb of data, that's around an hour for just a 32Gb SDcard transfer. Far from most of our needs.

 

A dedicated USB3 or even USB2 card reader would be faster that this speed, even chained behind an USB hub.

 

Side note, a lot of the utrabook have dedicated SD card slots too now, specially starting 13" size

[olli]

Western Digital have a portable hard drive in the My Passport range that has a built in card reader for SD. It's HDD and available up to 1TB last time I looked but possibly more now. I think they go for around $130. There are other more specialised options with built in LCD screens but they tend to be much more expensive. If all you want to do is back up rather than edit on the go this saves having to carry anything else. (The WD does also have wi fi so in theory you could access the images on any wireless device like your tablet to art least do a review and delete the rubbish.)

[darknj]

I looked at the WD My Passport with integrated SD card reader, it looks really nice. Haven't got the chance to test it out yet, but seriously considering to, I just need to know if there is a way to perform an auto backup of the SD card that gets slide in.

 

If so, I could be buying one very soon.

[XtJerry]

You have all been really helpful.  I am still looking.  Light, small, DVD capable, i7 chip, HDMI capable, fast enough for Photoshop CC and 500 GB memory are what I am narrowing down to.  Must be one out there that I can afford.

 

Jerry

[darknj]

What about Microsoft's Surface 4? You would need an external DVD player but that could hit all your needs. Or close to.

[XtJerry]

I am leaning toward a Toshiba S55-C5262 at B&H at $899 (US).  But still open to ideas and thoughts.

 

i7 Dual, 12 GB RAM, 4GB dedicated ram on GPU15.6" Tru-Brite screen, 1900x1080, 1T hard drive, HDMI, DVD, back lit keyboard 

 

Thanks for lead on Surface 4.  It may not have some of what I need.

 

Thanks,

Jerry

[darknj]

Do be careful with Toshiba, they are quite good at the core, but they have the nasty habit of breaking down starting from the peripherals, keyboard, DVD player, card reader,...

 

All the Toshiba I ever had for a long time started to break from small bits and pieces, which is annoying because the rest of the system is still fine.

[XtJerry]

Thanks to all.  I did get the Toshiba, above, as it met all of my criteria except perhaps weight.

 

In my family there have been 4 Toshibas and our fortune has been the opposite of darknj.  We have not had problems; but, again, it may just be chance or the particular use we have put the lap top to.

 

Thanks, again

 

XtJerry

[milandro]

Toshiba has announced today severe losses and plans to reduce personnel and redirect future activities which will probably involve their exit from the consumer electronics and computer market.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-restructuring-announcement-idUSKBN0U40IH20151221

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-redundancies-idUSKBN0TX23920151214