This is a recent post from my blog, but I thought it may be useful for other people travelling.
‘It is now common practice for photographers to carry laptops as well as their camera gear. With back complaints being a common problem for us all, this extra weight is literally a pain. When I can I like to return to the simplicity of using a Leica range-finder camera and film, this allows me to go really light weight. The only problem is that I have become too reliant on having a computer with me for things like writing and checking emails, so I still take it with me!
I have recently been trying out the Open-Source office suite ‘OpenOffice’. This is a free Microsoft ‘Office’ replacement, built by Sun Microsystems. Whilst browsing their website, I found a reference to ‘Portable Apps’. It turns out that these are PC programs that can be used, stand-alone from a memory stick. They don’t install themselves on the host computer, but run independently! Looking through the list of software I found that the whole ‘OpenOffice’ suite is available, including word processor, spreadsheet and PowerPoint clone. As well as the Mozilla email application ‘Thunderbird’ and ftp program ‘Filezilla’. My experiments with them so far have been really positive. On a 256 Mb memory stick, they take up 165 Mb leaving me 84 Mb free.
Today whilst working with a client, I was asked if I could upload an image to their web site, whilst they had a computer they didn’t have an ftp program on it! So I plugged in my memory stick, uploaded the image and checked my email as well!
I know this is a bit geeky, but on some trips where I know I can use other people PCs I may leave my laptop at home! All I need now is a ‘Portable App’ version of PhotoShop!’
via RSS
via email
