Take a laptop or leave it home?

[Bob & Anita]

I use mine only to download pictures from the camera to free up memory.

[nothintolose]

Don't own one but wouldn't take one if I had one. Would prefer if the tv was off the whole time too - like to get away from everything.

nothintolose

[AnyTing]

For me, no, never, no way, not ever. For my husband, he would stop BREATHING without his laptop. On one trip to St. John, he brought this enormous folder full of receipts and entered them into a spreadsheet while we where there. He is SICK, SICK, SICK.

[MrB]

I use mine only to download pictures from the camera to free up memory.

Same here B & A. If you remember our underwater videos from last year, they were all done from a sony w70 cybershot, so, even with 2GB cards, they filled up fast. I would dump them to the laptop before happy hour, so I had them ready for that night.

Also, when we got down last year, the promised Bose system for the villa was out being repaird, so I was able to rig up the laptop to the speakers, so as to have at least some tunes from the 3 DVD's worth of music we brought.

It was also nice to have during the long delay in Miami between flights. I was able to sit a pre-edit alot of the underwater pictures.

So, I guess that means I say BRING!

[sea-nile]

I would like to bring one to download pictures and check the forum, but never to work!

[JT]

OK, to each their own, but no way in hell would I bring a laptop or cell phone. When I was running a business I rarely took a vacation, but when I did, I was ON VACATION. I don't even give anyone a phone # of where we are. If the place burnt down, what was I gonna do from there? Come back early? I don't think so. As to now, I do go into Keep Me Posted next to Aqua Bistro and send you guys nanny,nanny boo-boos live from Coral Bay, but that's about it.
One thing I can't stress enough is that laptops are being ripped off at an incredible rate down there. You really ought to back up anything important before you leave, and if you really gotta take it with you be careful where you leave it.

[patr]

Interestingly enough it seems like everyone is pretty divided on this issue.

We are definitely taking the laptop along. My husband has a cable lock and will lock it to the refrigerator or some other immobile object while we're out and about.

CA girl, his laptop was stolen from his car last year, and I thought he would roll over and die!! His IT guys worked for about 2 weeks to recover data (which was supposedly backed-up to the central network) I think they recovered roughly 90%. Now he faithfully saves to a back-up drive here at home.

I'm not sure how faithful I'll be to the forum. (unlike Jorge) I will be busy out enjoying my vacation, but may try to post some real time reports if I get the opportunity.

[California Girl]

I could totally back up my data, but I'd want to delete nearly everything off the laptop so no one else gets my information if it gets stolen. Even at that, I don't keep social security numbers and passwords and the like on my computer anyway. I'm not worried about losing the data... just that someone else will end up with it, even if I have a copy. I may just move everything over to our other machine, which we have just gotten back from having repaired, but I'd really have to clean house on the laptop and I don't know if I'm up to that. Hell, I don't want to drag it along anyway.

[Steve S]

No Laptop! (does not make the cut for a "carry-on commando") But... I do bring my Dell pocket pc with wireless; it doubles as my MP3 music machine.

[obsessedmuch]

The only reason I'm thinking about bringing mine is to download pictures at the end of the day. With two cameras and only 3 memory cards between them, I'm nervous 700 photos won't be enough. I know that sound like a ton but I'm also obsessed with photography.

I'm also nervous about the safety of the laptop, though. And a 4th memory card is cheaper than a new machine...hmmm...

[jmq]

If one of the only reasons you are bringing a laptop is to offload photos from your digital cameras, I believe that you can transfer photos onto the newer large capacity Ipods (and possibly other types of mp3 players) directly from some cameras, so that may be an alternative to consider. Hopefully someone with firsthand knowledge of this can enlighten us.

[California Girl]

I have a 30GB iPod and I'd just LOVE to know the answer to that!!

[obsessedmuch]

I think you need a unique connector? If anyone knows, I'd LOVE to hear it! My iPod is the biggest, I think. Geez, I'm so techical! I do not sound like I work in IT at all, do I?

Thanks in advance to anyone who might know!

[Steve S]

Looks like there is something called an ipod camera connector -

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301059


And it sells for under $30

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?sourc ... a=N&tab=wf

Have fun!

[Ron_L]

I didn't take mine and I really didn't miss it. It would have been nice to download the digital pics to see what they looked like on a larger screen, but not necessary.

As far as memory cards for the cameras, we ended up with about 850 pictures on two cameras. I have a 4gb card in each camera and shot at max resolution and never had a problem with space.