vja4Him

Which laptop would you recommend for bicycle touring ? Earlier this year I got the Dell Inspiron 5770 17", which is a very nice laptop, BUT definitely NOT any good for traveling !!! I'm lucky to get 60-90 minutes max, when I'm working on typing, editing images and videos, which is what I would be doing while touring. So, this really nice, high-end laptop is useless for touring !!!

I need a laptop with maximum battery life, and at least one USB port, and a reasonably nice keyboard. I'm thinking of maybe 10-12-inch screen size. Don't really need all the bells and whistles that my Dell laptop has (almost everything !!!). Would be nice to have an SSD drive though …..

I will be going online to upload images and videos while traveling, and may need to tether to my T-Mobile service through my cell phone ….. I can do some editing with my Note 8 to save on laptop battery.

Price is really not a big deal. I'm thinking of spending around $500-900.00 (US) … ?

texbiker

A Samsung Chromebook Plus or Pro would do what you want and they are the size and light.

Marcus_Ti

I'd consider something like an Acer Switch or a MS Surface device. Lightweight, compact, SSD, decent battery life.

vja4Him

These two laptops are looking good: 1) Lenovo ThinkPad T470 (16 hours battery with extra extended battery), 2) Dell XPS 13 9360, the older model, which has more features (almost 16 hours battery).

Battery Life is crucial, but I also do not want to be stuck with limited applications, like some laptops. I need to do some serious (not high-end though) image and video editing while on the road.

saddlesores

i can't use the keyboard on a 14" laptop, not with XXL-sized fingers! take a separate keyboard.....they gots folding keyboards nowadays, and google tells me they even gots roll-ups in wireless!

Cyclist0108

A secondhand/refurb 11" Macbook Air might be a good option.

daoswald

A few options:

Dell XPS-13. Probably less weight than a typical 12" laptop.
Surface Pro
Lenovo X1 Carbon 13"

These are not cheap. They're all very compact for the screen size you get, and are light weight.

If these are too big, you might want a 10" tablet with keyboard.

One thing I can say: I commute once or twice a week with a laptop, change of clothes, some headphones, change of shoes (since I ride clipless). It all fits in one pannier mid-size pannier, but sometimes I spread the stuff across two in order to feel a little better balanced with the amount of weight this becomes. My laptop has a 15.6" screen size. So unless you're highly concerned with weight, a good compact 13" laptop would be fine.

vja4Him

I would be happy with even a 12" laptop. The first concern is long battery life … Second would be an SSD …. then SD Card Reader … at least one USB Port. And of course, I will need some way to connect to the Internet ….

linus

I didn't purchase my laptop for my travels, but I ended up with Dell XPS 13 and I'm pretty happy with it. It uses 11" sleeve so pretty compact.

Doug64

My wife and I use a Toshiba net book, which has plenty of computing power. We have Photoshop loaded on it, and it has a lot of sto storage space for phot backup. It has traveled in our panniers for 15,000 miles without any problems.

vja4Him

Does your laptop have a mechanical HD or SSD ?

Doug64

It has a mechanical. We had an Acer netbook with a SSD, but was too slow. The mechanical hard drive is locked when the computer is off, and is actually pretty durable.

vja4Him

I'm surprised …. I've heard that SSD drives are faster than mechanical. My son is a gamer and claims that his SSD is much faster than any mechanical drives he has had.

Marcus_Ti

It shouldn't even be close. If it is, or a spinner is faster--the OEM seriously screwed their hardware config up.

A fast spinner can do maybe 150MB/second sustained at most. A SATA SSD (5 years ago) could do 3-4X that, an M2 SSD should do 10X what even a fast spinner can do.

vja4Him

I wonder why your SSD would be slow …..

Nerdanel 

I agree with this. I took my 11" MBA touring and camping for 8 weeks in 2014 and also used it for several years bike commuting with no trouble. I'm too much of a klutz for a spinning hd.

Marcus_Ti

Uber cheap flash memory...also cheap motherboard with SATA2 connectors and not SATA3. He mentions having an Acer, and they're very much a cheap budget brand.

vja4Him

My Galaxy Note 8 is faster than my Dell laptop ! And I have 32GB of RAM in my laptop.

fietsbob

Windows Surface seems light and compact-thin 2 useful attributes...

veganbikes

Remember when we used to take a paper based notebook.

Sadly I haven't had the time for long tours that I would want a laptop but I generally will take my iPad mini (or whatever it is called it is older) because it is in a lifeproof case and is generally light and easy to use. However long typing and more advanced photo/video editing is not as easy.

MarcusT

I have the Acer Alpha Switch 12 and I am not satisfied with it. (slow, locks up, sometimes needs several restarts) I should have spent the extra money and bought the Surface

bikenh

I use a HP Stream Notebook, 13". I removed Windows 10 first thing and installed Linux Mint. I made a chloroplast carrying case for it and have been carrying it around with me everyday for the past two years on the bike. When on the touring bike it fits down into the kitty liter buckets quite nicely, unlike my old 15 inch laptop I use to use. I have big fingers and have no trouble using the keyboard. The mouse is a bit finicky(horrible sp?) unlike most keypad mouses. That's the only bad thing I would have to say about it. I paid just under $200 at Walmart for it. It has two USB ports, one microSD port, and another port that Im not sure if it is HDMI or what the heck it is, I've never used it for anything. I can get anywhere from 4-8 hour on battery life...depending on both how bright I keep the screen and how much I'm using the internet. If you limit both of those things you can get better battery life.

fantom1 

This. Super long battery life, SSD, very thin. IMO the perfect laptop if you had to bring one.

DIY masochist

I toured all summer with a Samsung N210 netbook running Lubuntu. It's almost 10 years old and really slow, but it was small and cheap, so I didn't really have to worry about it getting ruined. For your budget, though, you could get something like a used Lenovo X250, which would still be pretty new. I would think the X series laptops would be better for touring than the T series because they're made to be portable and use less battery. I'm not sure if all Lenovo models have this, but the X250 and newer have an internal and an external hot swappable battery, so you could even keep a spare battery pack to extend the life further. I got an X270 last year and I can get about 10-12 hours out of it running Linux, so I can work from home all day without charging it. Linux hardware support also runs a few years behind Windows, so I assume on Windows it would be even better.

Notably, they did away with the removable battery on the X280 and soldered the RAM, so I'm glad I got the last model before they changed the design. When I was shopping around, I also really liked the look of the Dell XPS13 (as others have mentioned), but I'm a nerd and I need my computer to be easy to take apart and service, so I went with Lenovo. You can easily do things like add an mSATA SSD into the WWAN card slot, upgrade the RAM, etc. You can get the x270 with an NVMe SSD or a spinning hard drive in the hard drive bay. I bought one with the cheapest HDD and just removed it, upgraded it to a 2TB, and added an SSD as well.

skimaxpower

Go to the public library in the towns you visit. Free, no extra weight to carry, and a great opportunity to interact with locals.