One Year Away

Joseph

As Penny mentioned we broke down and bought a laptop computer. For all who care about such things, we went for the Gateway 370. It has a 14” screen, 1.5 Ghz, 60 GB hard drive, weighs about 5 lbs and has a cool SD card reader that makes loading our pictures a lot easier.

Happily, it was also the least expensive laptop in the store at $500. There were smaller and lighter laptops, including a really great one from Sony, but they were all over $2300. We don’t want something so expensive that we’ll be very upset if we lose, break or get it stolen. It will be used mainly to access the Internet and store photos so performance wasn’t a key concern. As I told the sales guy, after he made several attempts to upsell me, “If you made a disposable laptop that’d be the one I’d be buying.”

In backpacking circles we are now officially known as “Flashpackers”. We’ve joined the group of  people who backpack with lots of technological gear. We now have; a laptop, video Ipod, 2 digital cameras, 1 GB USB drive, GPS device and cellphone. So far the gear has been helpful and we’re glad to travel with it. It’s all quite small and light so the bulk and weight hasn’t bothered us too much.