New Laptop or Smartphone/PDA & PhotoJo?

[John Clare]

Hi,

My 12" iBook G3 packed up just before Xmas (just as I was about to wire some images, no less...) and Father Chrismas failed to buy me a new one!

So, I have a difficult decision to make very quickly....

Shall I buy a shiny new MacBook, or should I get a PDA and PhotoJo? Or should I get the G3 repaired?

I hate carrying gear - so the PDA option is tempting. I'm looking at a stand alone PDA (i have a 3G mobile phone with Bluetooth) or a Smartphone (http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/h...detail/upgrade)

Only problem with the Smartphone is that it doesn't take CF cards, which is what I shoot with. It does however have a firewire port so I assume a firewire CF reader is all that's needed!

I've just seriously starting doing general press work (photocalls, premieres and the like) and hate carrying loads of gear. I've read great things about PhotoJo and it looks fantastic.

I'm just wondering if I'd be missing much by not getting another latop. I mainly use laptop for FTPing stuff, and not much else. I doubt I'll be running Photoshop on it, just on my main Mac at home.

Any advice would be great!

Happy 2007 to you all,

John

[John Clare]

Where are you all?

Is anyone reading this forum? Seems very quiet!

Regards,

John

[Mark_Milstein]

John,

I too faced the same problem about 18 months ago. I decided to go with an iPAQ 4700 bundled with PhoJo.

I couldn't have been happier at first. I would go on an assignment, shoot, edit and transmit using my 3G enabled Nokia 6680. I could even speed things up if there was an available hotspot.

As good as things were (for about one year), I started to see cracks in my plans as I tried to use the iPAQ/ PhoJo combination at major events (OPEC summits, presidential visits, etc).

The iPAQ's screen just isn't big enough to support multiple photo viewing (in order to compare and contrast two or more images), and so I made choices b based upon thumbnail views rather than full examinations using Photoshop.

Additional cracks began to appear with the iPAQ/ PhoJo combination when it came to writing captions. For single issue assignments (interviews with one person or a single subject), the two couldn't be beat. When it came to assignments with four, five, six or more people or events involved, I prayed for a laptop.

In the end, I ended up buyins an ASUS S6f 11.1 inch subnotebook to augment the iPAQ.

Depending on the assignment, I take one or the other.

Hope this helps. E-mail me if you need more information.

Best,

Mark Milstein