slight problem with travel
 

Hi...

I'm going to be going to nyc soon and i don't have a laptop, but i need a CHEAP way of:
1. burning cd's or having a largish hard drive to store hundreds of 6MB files (pictures in raw form)
2. getting online.


any idea?

Going to places to do them for you? I assume the pictures are from a digital camera, so you could go to a photo store and have them burn them onto a CD... most likely while you wait. Nearly all photo shops will do this for you, if they know what's good for them. OR, you could check copy shops, OR internet cafes (they may offer CD burning at a slight charge).

And getting online, again, the internet cafes. They're not CHEAP, but they're not particularly EXPENSIVE, either. Or public libraries. Though you would probably have to get a membership there, and you might have difficulty getting to a computer if they're busy. But it might be worth looking.

Yeah, I think that may be a better idea than buying a cheap laptop. A laptop is definitely something I would start saving for, especially with your digital photography (I always take mine so I can dump my CF cards and do some prelimenary tinkering with the images), but running out and grabbing a cheap one probably isnt the best idea in the world. I havent had anything but problems with cheap laptops.

Once you get one though, I highly suggest an external 2.5" USB hard-drive. It allows you to easily expand your storage, and lets you have some redundancy too (copy the RAW files to both the laptop internal drive and the external drive). Redundancy is a good thing--always have at least two copies of the RAW files, stored in seperate locations (one on a CD, one on a hard drive, for example). I lost some images from a vacation I took a few years ago when the CDs they were on crapped out on me. :(

how long are you going for?

best way would just be as said before, with the internet cafes. i can't really think of anything else besides bringing your own laptop.

a lot of notebook vendors allow you a 30 day guarantee policy. buy it and return it within 30 days no questions asked. there is the question of ethics if you plan on buying one knowing you're going to return it though.

heh, my luck, my flight would be delayed and i'll miss the 30 day deadline

plus that whole ethics thing

I'm seriously perplexed and i'd kinda like to avoid internet cafe, but if there were a place that would just burn the card contents to cd, i'd be happy...

you could always get a universal card reader and external burner. still need to find a computer to use it though. =/

yeah
i even saw a portable cd burner..that would be great.

Eh. That's why I suggested a photo store first. They will burn photo CDs for you. It doesn't matter (shouldn't matter) what format the photos are in. Almost all decent photo stores will do that now, and some pharmacies will too.

There are devices that will take flash-cards and burn them onto a cd. Look over at 'steves-digicams.com'.

As for getting online, there are several net cafes in NYC, look for 'Easy-Everything'; they're inexpensive and have great bandwidth...

-SF

That thing is awesome. I think I need one.

I store copys of all my digital pics on 250 mb Iomega disks.
the reader is small and plugs into a usb port.....

Discs will run you around $14 at Wahly world...

I also keep a copy of a free disc recovery on hand, just in case...

see, my files are 5-7 Mb each and i use 2 256MB cards a day. the cards themselves aer about $20 if i get them on sale, so using a 250 MB card to store them isn't really helping me :)

Luckily, though, my pregnant ex gf is loaning me her laptop as she doesn't use it anymore. I'll pick it up today adn decide if i want to get either a small cd burner or just an external hard drive...