Laptops for Travel (and Electronic Reading Device)

It's a low end Windows laptop so you should be able to plug an external drive in.

I'll check the spec properly when I get home.

How much data will you be taking? Might be easier to take a few micro sd cards instead.

As mentioned above saving onto the cloud is a good idea, but obviously dependent on you having an internet connection.
 
Stay away from the Apple dark side, LOL!

To keep a long story relatively short, I bought a HP 2-in-1 tablet & keyboard from John Lewis years ago. It died and I replaced it with what I thought was a cheap and cheerful Lenovo i5 SSD laptop (about £450 IIRC). It has been brilliant - boots up in about 5 seconds (faster than the gaming PC that I just built).

SSDs mean that you can get a light laptop with loads of storage. Take a trip down to PC World and have a look.

This one costs £500 and looks pretty good:

In terms of reading books, I use my smartphone and download from Amazon Kindle or Google Play store. Probably not as good as a Kindle but I like to travel light. Otherwise my favourite way is the old fashioned paperback.
 
I have a Kobo Forma e-reader that I can (what is known as) side-load content that comes from anywhere. It can use the Kindle format (mobi) or the usual epub format amongst others (like PDF). I love mine!
I have a couple of Chromebooks (for the kids) but they run on ChromeOS so it may not be fully compatible with your Dell.
Have you looked at the Microsoft Surface Go?
 
Thanks Strevel and Slverback, very good advice, I will look into your suggestions. I must admit, I also like the old fashion paperback, but will not be able to take on my next planned trip due to complete lack of space (and weight issues)
 
Hello Glen_Lee, thank you for your interest. I am still in the process of deciding, with the compatibility issue mentioned above. The issue is that I wish to have compatibility with my main laptop but with the lightness of a travel laptop. I am not really technically minded when it comes to PC's so I need to be able to obtain and send e-mails from both lap tops, as I will need to communicate whilst travelling. I will also need internet access as I will need to book train tickets etc when I am in India and will need access to various Indian Sites (which I currently have on my main LT) and again will need to replicate on my Travel LT. It's all a bit be wielding to me, but I suppose for people who have always grown up with this sort of technology it is everyday / simple stuff. I am okay when every thing is set up, its just really knowing what to purchase and then how to set the device up to replicate my Main LT. My experiences with PC World thus far have been a little disappointing. I am also trying to do this whilst planning to travel India on the Railway Network, which is entirely another matter, but as you can imagine involves a considerable amount of bureaucracy, as Indian trains need to be booked 120 days before travel, otherwise they all get booked up and then you're snookered.
Any further guidance and assistance would be very much appreciated, kind regards, whitesix
 
Hello Glen_Lee, thank you for your interest. I am still in the process of deciding, with the compatibility issue mentioned above. The issue is that I wish to have compatibility with my main laptop but with the lightness of a travel laptop. I am not really technically minded when it comes to PC's so I need to be able to obtain and send e-mails from both lap tops, as I will need to communicate whilst travelling. I will also need internet access as I will need to book train tickets etc when I am in India and will need access to various Indian Sites (which I currently have on my main LT) and again will need to replicate on my Travel LT. It's all a bit be wielding to me, but I suppose for people who have always grown up with this sort of technology it is everyday / simple stuff. I am okay when every thing is set up, its just really knowing what to purchase and then how to set the device up to replicate my Main LT. My experiences with PC World thus far have been a little disappointing. I am also trying to do this whilst planning to travel India on the Railway Network, which is entirely another matter, but as you can imagine involves a considerable amount of bureaucracy, as Indian trains need to be booked 120 days before travel, otherwise they all get booked up and then you're snookered.
Any further guidance and assistance would be very much appreciated, kind regards, whitesix
If you are not overly techie, dont worry about it - keep it simple.

Your desktop is windows 10 - buy a laptop with window 10, will be nice and familiar.

You need connectivity for an external hard drive & wifi - ensure the spec meets this.

For travel you want a laptop to be portable and light; maybe replaceable should it get broken or nicked. Plenty of cheapish laptops.

For sending emails, checking train timetables and reading ebooks - all laptops will meet these requirements.

Everyone will have their favorites; Lenovo are solid, have a good reputation and portable. Here's a couple as examples that are a good price and decent spec:



May be worth think of your laptop as a secondary computer. Your main one being your PC. That way you can lower your price range for a laptop, have some familarity, and accept the risk of travelling with a piece of tech that could be vulnerable.
 
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