For the non-laptop, has she thought about something like the Palm
LifeDrive? Not a ton of storage space, true (4 GB), but it'll do a lot
of other things that are useful on a road trip. It has a well-sized
screen (over four inches), will do e-mail and internet connected either
via a modern cell phone or wireless, and can do many things that you'd
want a laptop to do, but it fits comfortably in a pocket.
I don't think there's any software for it currently that displays RAW
files, and I think that the only card slot in it is for SD.
I don't own one -- I own the Palm TX, which is similar but without the
4GB internal storage (it only has about 100mb of user-accessible memory
plus whatever you stick in the SD slot), and I've been surprised by how
capable it is. So capable, in fact, that my iBook that needs a minor
repair may never be repaired. I did get a wireless keyboard for it to
speed up my writing. Once I found out that they had upgraded the press
box at Rogers Centre to have wireless instead of banks of phone jacks
for dial-up modems, I immediately tried pulling out the SD card from
the camera and sticking it into the Palm and then sending the files via
e-mail as an attachment -- it worked beautifully. It would probably
drive me up the wall trying to send all 800, but for filing a couple of
key shots in a hurry, it rocks and rolls. Now I'm trying to find a web
uploader that works consistently with the internet browser built into
the Palm.
Oh, there's another idea -- get a free gmail account from Google, get a
Palm with wireless and e-mail your images to yourself for storage
whenever you hit a coffee shop or restaurant or wherever you find
wireless access.
It was greatly useful on our trip to Washington, where we'd stop for
coffee at places where we knew there was free wireless and check all of
our e-mail and news from home.
-Aaron
On Apr 29, 2006, at 11:02 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
A question was posed to me by a friend. She is looking for a small,
portable, ink jet printer that can produce prints up to about 5x7 in
size,
no need to go larger, although she'll consider 8x10 if she has to,
that can
work on either batteries or electricity, or perhaps from on inverter
in her
van. She's going to be traveling around the US and would like to make
small prints for the people she photographs. Limiting the results to
color
is fine.
Also - and I know this has come up before, but options may have
changed -
what might be a good image storage option - perhaps something with a
nice-sized screen that can accept SD and CF cards. She's thought
about a
lap top, but would ideally like something smaller and more portable.
I've no idea what to suggest to her.
Shel
