as long as you are sitting down sipping lattes..I know there is wireless through hydro one... I play with my laptop on the streetcar. Now coverage on your bike tour....

Some of those crazy Nokia phones have it all.

In that case, you'll either need one of those solar panel rechargers (all of them use rechargeable Li-on batteries) or you'll have to get a model which uses regular AAA batteries etc.

Right now i'm envisioning you riding through like a desolate wasteland with no natural resources or human settlement in sight. A guy on a touring bike tapping away his memoirs on a PDA and then living like a nomad for 20 years.

You might find this link helpful: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/forum...rd_id=379&v=50

kenkifers page on carrying a fullsize laptop: http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/laptop.htm

I'll just charge when I find an outlet, same with my phone and camera... I don't care if they're out of juice for a couple of days. They should make generator hubs for lights that you can shunt into a gadget.

edit: wow that factory direct site has a ton of SUPER cheap options. Like 20 bones.

edit edit: that IPaq has great reviews. 7 hours audio playback, 6 hours video, 3 hours talk time and the batteries are removable and upgradable to an even bigger battery.. Might have to send that guy an email

edit edit edit: Op. If I'm THAT isolated I'll just break down and write in a journal...

Regarding free windows xp and vista, I run OS X unless I have absolutely no other choice.

Regarding a PDA I thought long and hard about such things when my last cell phone went down the tubes. I tried the Treo 6 and 7 series but found them lame and lacking in camera quality. The Sony P990 was just too bulky for me and the Nokia E61 was nice but again to wide. I use a Nokia N80 with a 2gig miniSD card. It takes pretty good pictures, OK video and has WiFi and bluetooth. The built-in web browser blows the socks off of any other I've used including the free opera browser. It also is fully 3g supported so overseas I can use the wonders of a decent wireless network.

As for keyboards all the built in ones from crackberries on down have sucked. I got one of these and have really enjoyed it for what its built for. You can get them for sub 100 if you look hard enough.

For a journal nothing will ever beat a moleskin for the joy of writing on its paper.

I want that singlespeed wheel, damn you and by damn you I mean fantastic find.

That is all.

I'm not against writing in a notebook I just hate transcribing stuff. As for fancy ass notebooks and laser keyboards and stuff, I don't need to pretend I'm hemingway or a member of starfleet or anything... bare bones easy text entry dedicated PDA (not cell phone) and good battery life.

Took the words from my mouth. I'm a huge nerd and a total gadget geek, but you can pry my moleskine notebooks and pigma microns from my cold dead hands. Being on tour and having to worry about moisture (waterproof all you want, things ARE going to get swampy) and battery life, electronic dingdongs don't really seem like the best choice.

edit: of course, if your main point is to be publishing stuff online, then perhaps a pda IS the right way to go. Take a look for an old Palm Tungsten W. It's got a keyboard AND a gsm/gprs antenna.

If you plan to do any serious writing, as in longer then a 3 line missive, then you either need a real keyboard or to get a notebook and some good OCR software for your scanner.

I don't know about that. Paper doesn't seem all that waterproof either. Although I am hearing the Russian Space Agency vs Nasa pencil vs pen thing in my head again.

http://www.palm.com/us/images/produc...eyboard/01.jpg

OCR, ftl especially since it's not perfect yet. And scanning and ocr'ing paper is a non-trivial time expense in of itself.

Basically the cheapest, longest battery lasting version of the above is what I need. And a piece 1x8 to put on my lap so I can use it!

hahaha.. sweet sweet fisher space pen. :P But yeah, the pens I mentioned have waterproof/etc ink, so it's not a big concern. The moleskine paper is also pretty hardy and since it's encased in a hardcover and closed with an elastic the worst that could happen is having the paper go kinda warped/wrinkly. :)

You know what, forget it. I'm just going to go memento style with my travelogue.
http://www.filmkrant.nl/av/org/filmk...20/memento.jpg

Lol.

With the stuff on this webpage weather is no longer a concern for electronics or paper notebooks.

http://www.waterproof-paper.com/wate...ield-book.html

Operator how long are you at SS. I can swing by there or bikchain right now.


And shiz, for any extended typing, an IR keyboard is the shnit. My Zaurus has a thumboard built in but for anything lengthy, I'll fire up the IR keyboard.

And for wireless listings, Wireless bandit for the win. http://www.wirelessbandit.com/

I'm not at school :|

You have a zaurus? noice. I always wanted one of those for the linuxy goodness and keyboard. :)

6 degrees and sunny on Sunday. woot. It's been far too long since I've gotten out for a proper ride on the road bike.

I think I'd prefer the roll up rubber keyboard the best. Durable, waterproof, battery free and they provide some spring and feedback which I like. Cheap as hell and acts as a case too.

Does the zaurus take compact flash cards? Because if so I have a 2gb one in my camera and barely any cameras use them except for DSLRs

The only prob with the rubber keyboards is that you need a flat surface to lay it on.. definitely no "lap desk" action with one of those. :P

I think the zaurus does use CF cards however, but they (the zaurus that is) aren't super easy to find used as far as I know... correct me if I'm wrong.

wow.. those zaurus things are nice. cam, are you running bsd on yours?

They also have one of those "holographic" keyboards. Requires flat surface though. I guess you could rediscover like pottery or masonry and like construction...

Most of them run a variant of linux from the factory, but some apparently were released with OpenBSD as well. Lots of other open source stuff runs on them too.. you can even install web/ftp/database servers on them. </nerd talk>

And to bring this back to the realm of bikes.. I saw some talk about Bike Pirates back there, and I also know several of us frequent ideal coffee. Has anyone noticed that another ideal regular is a regular at Bike Pirates as well? At least I *think* that's the guy I'm thinking of. The hilarious thing is that he's even drinking what looks to be an ideal coffee in his picture on the site (Geoff), which backs up my theory:

http://www.bikepirates.com/people.html

That's the guy with the Cervelo Soloist Team that I see almost every time I go for a coffee at lunch. :)

edit: then again the "if it ain't fixed it's broken" comment leads me to believe maybe this isn't the same guy.

Let's be 1337 and fork openbsd. We shall name the new OS BSD-Bikeforums v.0001 Monolithic kernel with most basic of schedulers and no kernel-level thread support. Also no paging or virtual memory. OWNED!

Some of the clamshell style ones are going for decent prices on ebay but they are older models. I see one called the SL-C1000 that is very new and pricey and doesn't seem to be offered in north america. Which one do you have cam?

correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think the SL-c1000 is one of the new models. it's supposed to be a cheaper variant of their top-of-the-line model.. just saying so you don't get gouged on ebay. there's a good wiki entry for the zaurus.