Our Gadgets On The Streets Of New York (Part Two)

In part one we rated the Palm Centro, the Asus Eee 901 netbook and LG GSA-E5ON portable CD/DVD rewriter as travelling companions. Read on for our round up.

Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini
With only 12GB of storage available on the Eee 901, we needed to back up our precious photo files on to this handy USB portable hard drive (as well as backing up to a 16GB memory card in the Eee).

The unit worked happily with the same USB cable as we used for the CD/DVD player, so we managed to keep the wire count pleasingly low too. WIN.

Nikon D300 dSLR and Nikon 18-200mm VR lens
We’ve been using this combo for nearly a year now, and although the D300 lens has performed impeccably throughout, in September the lens suddenly stopped working due to a motor failure and had to be sent off to Nikon for repair.

Infuriatingly, the exact same problem occurred on just the second day of our trip, and a visit to the US store we bought the lens from brought bad news: the repair would take three weeks. Seeing as we’d only brought the one lens over (the whole point of the lens is that it offers a perfect range of focal lengths in one package) it was a major blow. We declined to buy another costly lens for the sake of it, so reluctantly stuffed the camera straight back into the bag. In a huff. FAIL.

Panasonic Lumix LX3 compact digital camera
With our expensive D300 stuck in dry dock for the duration, we had to make do with the diminutive LX3 digital compact which was favourably reviewed in our recent feature,
Seeking The Perfect High-End Digital Compact Camera. The camera turned out to be a delight to use, offering superlative low light performance for such a small snapper, with the camera’s advanced iA mode making it perfect for grabbing quick street shots.

The sensationally fast f2.0-f2.8 24mm-60mm wide angle lens made it a perfect camera for landscapes and snapping Manhattan’s streets, and although it couldn’t match the output of the D300, it proved a perfect take-everywhere camera. WIN.