Stuff with wires

Anyone who knows how much I blog, tweet and hang around on Facebook knows, I’m quite attached to both the internet as an entity and the technology which allows me to access it.  The thought of spending nine months entirely without this stuff, sends me into a cold sweat.  Add into this the fact that we’ll be educating the children ourselves without access to many books, the need to book hotel rooms and train tickets and the desire to communicate with friends and family, and the huge stack of black shiny stuff waiting to be packed makes perfect sense. *Steve rolls eyes*

Yesterday, and very kind man from Scooter Computer came and had a look at my stuff, tidied up my hard drive and offered plenty of useful advice.  So after much to-ing and fro-ing, I think I have finally decided what we are taking.

1. Samsung N140 netbook: It’s slow and the screen is small, but it’s great for the internet, Skype and Word.  The slowness is more than offset by it’s dinky size, which means we won’t resent carrying it too much.
2. WD external drive: Mr Scooter explained that the netbook will get even slower if we store even a little bit of stuff on it, so he moved my iTunes library, photo and video libraries onto a WD portable hardrive.  It’s very little, yet can hold a lot.  Mr Scooter did point out that I need to really look after it, as it’s not the most stable of devices, and that memory sticks are also really useful and virtually indestructible.  I shall be getting some of these.  I shall also use Flickr to back up my best photos and this blog to record my bon mots.
3. iPhone 4:  We have a love hate relationship with this in our household, I love it, my husband hates it, mainly because it’s permanently attached to my hand.  It’s tiny and can do everything the netbook can so will basically be our second computer.  I’ve also kept my O2 contract so that we will have a phone number for people to contact us.
4. Samsung phone: I have bought the cheapest 4 band pay as you go phone available, so that we can buy SIM cards in each country.  This will hopefully make sorting travel arrangements a lot easier.
5. Nickon D90: I love taking photos. This is a great camera.  That is all.
6. iPods: We have three of these, one classic we’ve had for years, and two touches, which are Eve and Ned’s very generous birthday and Christmas presents from their grandparents.  These will cover all our entertainment needs and will also be useful educationally.  Times tables are much more palatable if you are being tested by a computer instead of your mother.
7. eReader: The thought of being without reading matter at any given time makes me twitchy.  This is really slim and light and can hold hundreds of books.  Now if I could just download and install the software properly, I’d be away.
8. Flip: These tiny video cameras are amazing.  They have no wires, contain all the editing software you need and are very good quality.  They are also so easy the children can happily use them.

I think that’s it.   We will of course have a myriad of chargers and converters.  I keep breezily saying “Oh it’s not much really”, to which Steve replies “Well you can carry it then.”  I’ll let you know how I get on.

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