[pct-l] Backcountry offices

Thu Jun 2 23:17:53 CDT 2011

Hey Ned,

I have no idea what you are looking for so I will just throw out some
of the best options - keeping in mind the best quality available for
the lightest weight products and the longest potential battery life.

For a laptop that runs Windows as the primary operating system, I
would have to suggest the "Lenovo x220". It is a tad heavy at 3
pounds. Lighter options are available but Lenovo's are 100% the most
top of the line laptop that exists in regards to quality and
life-span. Battery life of around 30 hours, unless you are doing
really intense stuff, it will drop down to around 18-20 hours. If you
can afford it, pick up the i7 with a SSD drive (the largest you can
afford) and at least 4gigs of ram. All said it will be between 1600
and 1900 depending on how you configure it. Not a cheap option but
this machine will be more powerful than 90% of the computers people
use today.

For a laptop that runs OSX (Mac) I would have to suggest the Macbook
Air. The little 11 inch one is 2.3 pounds and has a 8-10 hours of
battery life (5 if using it for intense stuff like video editing) and
the larger 13 inch is about double the battery life. It is suspected
that a new model is coming out very soon, but here is what I would buy
if I was getting one today. I would personally get the 11 inch
version, with 4 gigs of ram, and the 128 gig ssd drive. Going to loose
some battery life but the size factor of this thing is almost backpack
worthy for business owners. http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

If you are looking for a phone that is ultra small, ultra light, there
is a brand new phone called the "modu" that is not yet here in the USA
but can be bought online and shipped over to the USA. It is exactly 40
grams (1.41 ounces) which has allowed it to be named the worlds
lightest touch phone. http://youtu.be/2XEQ1ExuM4Q for a video of it

If you are looking for a phone that is a smidgen bit larger and can
surf the internet, I think the next smallest option would be the new
"Veer" from HP (palm). It hits the scales at 103 grams (3.63 ounces)
It is (sadly) only available on AT&T. I am not going to sit here and
play the "iphone verse android verses palm" game... I do not own the
veer, rather I am giving you the best options out there for what you
have asked for, and I think this is probably the smallest real phone
in regards to features verse weight. --
http://www.hpwebos.com/us/products/phones/veer/

Honestly, the only other option I would even remotely consider would
be the iPad 2 with 3G. It hits the scales at 1.35 pounds (613 g) has a
better battery life than anything listed above and is probably less
likely to break than anything listed above. I never toss my lenovo
laptops (say onto my bed or a couch) and I would never ever thinking
of tossing an Apple Air, but I have pretty much thrown my iPad all
over the place. Onto my bed, couch, desk, into my truck, it can take
some serious abuse, has the best battery life option.

If you went with the iPad 3G model you can pick either AT&T or Verizon
for your internet connection. If you went with the Lenovo x220 you
could also get a built in 3G antenna and purchase a data plan with
Verizon (best option out there, but the most expensive). If you went
with the Macbook Air you would have to pick up a third party product
such as the Verizon MyFi device. The little Veer phone would probably
come with a data plan. And the modu I have no idea, but you could
probably go with a Verizon plan at well (it would not work with AT&T
as the devices requires a CDMA service, of which AT&T is not, but
pretty much everybody else in the USA/World is)

Anyway Ned, those are (what I consider) to be the best options out
there. I suspect you will have a whole lot of folks jumping in here
and standing up for the Android, I am not one of them, but hear them
out as well. I have nothing against any of the Android devices, I just
do not feel they are the best of the best for ultra light weight and
exceptional battery life, such as the products I have listed above
(though somebody out there might have something out there running
Android that is the same size-factor as the Veer, I just don't know of
one.)

Hope that gets you started.

John B. Abela

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 8:11 PM,  <ned at mountaineducation.org> wrote:
> As Mountain Education becomes busier this year, we are finding that we need to stay in touch with the email world from the trail (sad to say, at least until we have a staff to help out!).
>
> We, as you know, use a satellite phone to stay in touch that way, but what kind of laptop or other device do we need to use to accomplish this??
>
> We are not technologically current on what's available...
>
>
> "Just remember, Be Careful out there!"
>
> Ned Tibbits, Director
> Mountain Education
> 1106A Ski Run Blvd
> South Lake Tahoe, Ca. 96150
>    P: 888-996-8333
>    F: 530-541-1456
>    C: 530-721-1551
>    http://www.mountaineducation.org
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