Netbook for portable photo management/backup?
Discussion
Going to be traveling early next year for a couple of months and want an easy and cheap way to back up photos without dragging my large, expensive MacBook Pro around. Looking around it seems secondhand netbooks are cheap and unfashionable. Most seem to be some configuration of 1.6ghz Atom/1gb ram/160gb hdd.
Question is - are they powerful enough to manage RAW files (Canon 60D/400D/G10)? Not wanting to do any serious editing although the ability to quickly touch up and export the odd photo to email would be nice.
If so the best OS for these now appears to be a lightweight Linux installation. Any recommendations for suitable distro and photo management apps? (Photos will eventually be processed in Aperture).
The alternative looks to be purpose built HDDs with card readers which have advantage of being smaller but are actually more expensive option as well as obviously less flexible.
Thanks for any advice.
Question is - are they powerful enough to manage RAW files (Canon 60D/400D/G10)? Not wanting to do any serious editing although the ability to quickly touch up and export the odd photo to email would be nice.
If so the best OS for these now appears to be a lightweight Linux installation. Any recommendations for suitable distro and photo management apps? (Photos will eventually be processed in Aperture).
The alternative looks to be purpose built HDDs with card readers which have advantage of being smaller but are actually more expensive option as well as obviously less flexible.
Thanks for any advice.
Will you be near Internet Cafes? You could just get a card reader and a cloud service like Onedrive, or Dropbox. That would be cheap and save the need for a netbook.
Also: cards are cheap, now. Buy a few?
This assumes you do not want to review or post process outside the camera. If you DO want to do that you need a proper computer. If travelling lightness is important as is a modicum of power. Have you looked at second hand macbook air? At least you'd be familiar with the o/s. You'd still want a card reader and a cloud service as the SSD in those things isn't large.
Also: cards are cheap, now. Buy a few?
This assumes you do not want to review or post process outside the camera. If you DO want to do that you need a proper computer. If travelling lightness is important as is a modicum of power. Have you looked at second hand macbook air? At least you'd be familiar with the o/s. You'd still want a card reader and a cloud service as the SSD in those things isn't large.
I took a netbook with that sort of spec (current at the time) when I went off travelling a few years ago.
It was fine for copying photos around but just working on JPGs was pretty slow. Was OK for general stuff, browsing, watching films, etc but did feel a bit sluggish.
I replaced it with a Lenovo x121e which I still have - may be worth looking for similar. Barely bigger or heavier than a netbook but a proper Core i3, 4GB RAM, etc.
It was fine for copying photos around but just working on JPGs was pretty slow. Was OK for general stuff, browsing, watching films, etc but did feel a bit sluggish.
I replaced it with a Lenovo x121e which I still have - may be worth looking for similar. Barely bigger or heavier than a netbook but a proper Core i3, 4GB RAM, etc.
I bought an Acer Aspire One a couple of years ago for much the same purpose. In my case weekends away and needing a significant amount of backup to hand.
320gb drive which is fine. I copy via SD card slot or external reader to the internal drive and then take a back up to an external drive before considering re-formatting the cards for use next day. (Often shooting >32Gb a day with most files being 10 to 16Mb).
I use FastStone (Portable) to assess the files and it can do a reasonable edit job if required. Good enough for viewing a day's shots or producing a few 'social media' files. Not fast editing though. But viewing is very fast.
When not out and about I use it as a Skype device. Video is OK if all parties have good speeds available. Audio seems to work rather well these days.
Mine came with dual boot Android/Win 7 Starter. Very old Android. Memory is limited to 1Gb. I bought a 2Gb card to upgrade but was put off by the challenge of working out how to unclip the casing successfully before reading that it won't support 2Gb anyway. Apparently.
Battery life is about 2 - 2.5 hrs.
Overall it's OK, especially for the purpose. I would not want to have to use it as a 'real' document producing machine though unless with an external keyboard and track pad. (The pad is OK, the buttons, on mine, are nasty.)
320gb drive which is fine. I copy via SD card slot or external reader to the internal drive and then take a back up to an external drive before considering re-formatting the cards for use next day. (Often shooting >32Gb a day with most files being 10 to 16Mb).
I use FastStone (Portable) to assess the files and it can do a reasonable edit job if required. Good enough for viewing a day's shots or producing a few 'social media' files. Not fast editing though. But viewing is very fast.
When not out and about I use it as a Skype device. Video is OK if all parties have good speeds available. Audio seems to work rather well these days.
Mine came with dual boot Android/Win 7 Starter. Very old Android. Memory is limited to 1Gb. I bought a 2Gb card to upgrade but was put off by the challenge of working out how to unclip the casing successfully before reading that it won't support 2Gb anyway. Apparently.
Battery life is about 2 - 2.5 hrs.
Overall it's OK, especially for the purpose. I would not want to have to use it as a 'real' document producing machine though unless with an external keyboard and track pad. (The pad is OK, the buttons, on mine, are nasty.)
My travel laptop is my Dell XPS13 Ultrabook, cost a little north of a grand, but I customised it a little to come with an i7 processor, 16Gb ram, 512Gb SSD, etc and have a few 2.5" portable HDD's for extra storage of the raw files/reworked files, it's more than fast enough for working on photos on the road when I really need to.
baz7175 said:
My travel laptop is my Dell XPS13 Ultrabook, cost a little north of a grand, but I customised it a little to come with an i7 processor, 16Gb ram, 512Gb SSD, etc and have a few 2.5" portable HDD's for extra storage of the raw files/reworked files, it's more than fast enough for working on photos on the road when I really need to.
You just need the 27" roll up light weight monitor with solar power adapter and you would be totally set Baz .... 
Or maybe Google Glass?
I think it blows the OP's budget this time but I have a similar tech spec Dell Precision workstation (obviously it's larger and heavier but ...) and the processing performance is excellent. Sounds like you got a good price for that configuration as well.
There's a spare mSATA slot in mine. A full speed 1Tb SSD would fill it nicely. Any spare slots in the XPS?
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