techie travel

We brought the touchpad & the laptop with us. The laptop so that I could check mail, & mostly, so I could download each day's photos off the three cameras. I didn't wipe the cards (until I finally had to wipe Hugo's because he filled his & we didn't have time to shop for another one) so that we had two sets of photos. If we lost a camera, we had the ones on the laptop. If the laptop got stolen/broken/fell in a canal in Venice, we had the pix on the camera cards. (Yup, paranoid much?)

One thing we did not do with our touchpad is take it around & use it as a camera. Like this: 

(h's camera - Big Bus London tour April 25 Palace of Westminster & man with Ipad)

I mean, does that look convenient or comfortable at all? I don't think so. Mind you, I'm a bit biased because my firesale HP touchpad doesn't have G3 so it's kinda useless unless you spend your entire time sitting in wifi hotspots. It was handy in the hotels for checking mail & checking the weather online, especially since there were 4 of us, & half the time the laptop was chugging away downloading photos. We did take it out sightseeing with us once, after loading it with a pdf visitor's guide of that particular day's destination & it was useful for that.

But as a camera? I used it once I think to tweet the view out of our Venice hotel but really, it looks silly to point this giant brick at things.

 I can definitely see the appeal of taking a smartphone traveling though, if you can survive the trial by fire of figuring out the best deals on local sims & roaming plans. I never did. (Also, I don't actually have a smartphone now LOL...)