What you think about Picturebook?

[Felipe_Castanho]

After I bought my EOS 1D I thought it was a goo idea to buy a laptop computer, because sometimes, I would travel for places that I had no way to download my pictures, soo it would be needed. I also thought that it would be nice to have a good machine that could no only store my pictures and check it but also process the workflow and fine tune my pictures. At that time I bought a Dell Ltitude with everything it could handle, in have even 1600x1200 resolution. But with some time I got disapointed, even being a laptop, it is not small enought, lightweight, the processor do the job but is slow with RAW pictures and worst of all the very nice display is far away to be as good as my 21´ desktop display. So I am thinking a little more humble at this time, Ithink I need a computer just to store and to check things like histograms and sharpness, composition, light and also to do some organization. I am looking forward to the Sony PicureBook. It appear to do a simpler job and also it is small and lightweight.
Do someone have experience with the Picture Book? Expecialy the newer model? Can I use it with my EOS1d to organize, store and check sharpness and histograms? Is is worth the money?

[Jonathan_Sachs]

I was facing a similar decision recently and ended up with the Panasonic T1 (2.4lbs) which I am very happy with. The screen and keyboard are large enough to be very usable and the screen quality is excellent. I also purchased a 60GB external USB drive and enough CF cards to last for a day's shooting so at the end of a day I can copy all the image from the cards to the internal hard drive and/or the external for extra security, and then add some field notes. None of the ultraportable subnotebooks is really fast, but the T1 is definitely fast enough for most purposes on the road. The Picturebook is comparable, but I personally prefer the T1's more convention screen proportions and the extra resolution. The T1 is a little larger but no heavier as it is very thin; it's internal hard drive is also protected from shock by a gel mount. The T1 is also available in the US while the latest Sony models have to be imported from Japan (e.g. http://shop.conics.net or http://www.dynamism.com)

You might also want to check out the Sony U3 (1.8 lbs) or the newer U101 which was just announced to replace it as they are even smaller and lighter but their screens are very small (around 7" diagonal) and the keyboard is too small (about 7" wide) to type on with anything but your thumbs.

Since none of these computers comes with an internal CD-ROM, you will need to purchase an external bootable drive in case you ever need to reload the OS.

Jonathan Sachs
Digital Light & Color