Laptops are bulky and annoying

Let's face it, the age of the laptop is over. They're pretty much just desktop alternatives that you can use on the couch, or take home from work. Which is cool and all, but they no longer do the job as the work-on-the-go device they were originally conceived to be. You're only gonna use it for that if you're carrying it somewhere anyway, and you have a big chunk of time, and a good work area with WiFi and preferably power, and the work you need to do is more than checking email or reading papers. Cos that can be done much more conveniently on a tablet.

What would I need a laptop for on my trip? There are two possible things. I could use a laptop to download photos and share them with the folks at home. I mean, sure I could, if I wanted to spend an hour or so every evening sorting photos instead of sitting in bars. After which the photos would still have to stay on my camera for backups, cos I don't see me hauling a backup drive over there, so I wouldn't even be saving memory card space. And that's even assuming I could get good internet for the thing. In-room hotel Ethernet is horribly expensive and will only exist for the first half of my trip. Hotel lobby WiFi is extremely limited. So that leaves wireless at, like, McDonald's and Starbucks. I think I've already mentioned something about the preferability of sitting in bars.

The other thing I might use a laptop for is to write up the report on the work part of my trip. Shee, dragging a 2.5 kg hunk of metal halfway round the world for a month to spend two hours writing a 1000-word report? I dunno, maybe it would be worth it. After I recovered from the spinal injury sustained by carrying it around everywhere because leaving it in my hotel would void my insurance policy.

Laptops. They're so over.