Traveling From Miami To DR With A PC

skiller said:

Hello everyone here I'm going to travel to miami on vacation and i'm planing to bring a desktop pc well only the case of the pc and bring it with me in my suitcase i want your opinion about this, i wanna know if there could be any problems with traveling with a pc in my suitcase or any problem with (US) customs ???

Thanks.

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Why would you take your PC on vacation?
What about the monitor?
Isn't a laptop easier?

You shouldn't have any problems, but you never know.
Customs here can be strange, one miniute wave you on, next minute want to search you.

I suggest you wrap it in a few clothes with a US$10/20 bill on the case.

Less than a month ago, I brought back with me from Provo, Utah, a large cpu loaded with special software, and on my way through Miami, I bought for it one of those new Sansung 21" flat screen monitor with TV feature. I packed the cpu in a soft fabric suitcase wrapped in six towels, and sent it through as luggage. I unpacked the flat monitor and covered the screen with cardboard, and carried it as a laptop. Going through customs at Las Americas airport, officers were ready to give me a hard time over the monitor. They insisted it was a TV, and I insisted it was my PC's monitor. I shook them off by telling them (with an attitude, of course) that I had it with me when I left Santo Domingo. Once home, I noticed that the inside of the pcu unit was a tangle of unplugged cables. The dismantling was done somewhere between Provo and Santo Domingo, however, those who did it where decent enough to leave inside a calling card: US security personnel (I'm sending the repair bill to Dick Cheney)

Mirador

Desktop vs Laptop

Unless your buying the parts for resale in the DR I would just go ahead and buy a laptop. There have been several articles recently on how the processing power of laptops has increased to the point that laptop sales are overtaking desktops. Personally I own a laptop and haven't considered a desktop. Plus I get to travel with it and not worry about all the extra weight. Something to take into consideration too in regards to computer equipment in the DR, it takes less energy to operate.

If you insist on a desktop though, I would just check out the local discounters such as Best Buy and Circuit City. You can get a decent desktop for US$500 or so with monitor. If your planning on more highend applications such as movie editing of course the price of the desktop will be the same as a laptop.

Comp Usa

I live in Florida and I think that the best store to buy comptuer parts is Comp USA. They are very price resonable and have a wide selection. There are also a lot of mail order things that you can get and if you are staying long enough and get express mail you might want to go that route. A good mag. for mail order is Computer Shopper. I hope this helps.

leromero said:

Unless your buying the parts for resale in the DR I would just go ahead and buy a laptop. There have been several articles recently on how the processing power of laptops has increased to the point that laptop sales are overtaking desktops. Personally I own a laptop and haven't considered a desktop. Plus I get to travel with it and not worry about all the extra weight. Something to take into consideration too in regards to computer equipment in the DR, it takes less energy to operate.

If you insist on a desktop though, I would just check out the local discounters such as Best Buy and Circuit City. You can get a decent desktop for US$500 or so with monitor. If your planning on more highend applications such as movie editing of course the price of the desktop will be the same as a laptop.

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Laptops do consume much less power than desktops. That is a concern here when you are running on an invertor. The drawback of a laptop over a desktop is the price. Apples for apples you pay twice as much for the laptop.

Everything being equal

gringo in dr said:

Laptops do consume much less power than desktops. That is a concern here when you are running on an invertor. The drawback of a laptop over a desktop is the price. Apples for apples you pay twice as much for the laptop.

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True, but let's assign a value to the difference in price. When you really get down to it there is nothing a desktop can do that a technologically current laptop can't do. So what kind of value would you put in the fact that you have a computer that takes up less current, easier to transport, i.e. no extra expense for "special luggage", and mobility to work at the beach if you really wanted to. So, according to Dell the kind of system that I would purchase currently runs about US$950 for a desktop and about US$1300 for a laptop. That's a difference of about US$350.

In the big scheme of things you will need to reach down deep inside you and see if the US$350 premium you are paying for the laptop is worth it. That unfortunately is an individual matter and not everybody will have the same answer. Personally for me the value of my time, mobility, and peace of mind is worth paying the premium. I can purchase for an extra US$100 a solar cell that will let me work on the laptop while it's battery recharges. The amount of business I can conduct will pay for this extra portability and like I stated previously, I can work at the beach if I wanted to.

As you can see, value is purely subjective and is something you learn in Business 101. Who wants to be tied down to a desk when you don't have to? Why not get out and enjoy your surroundings while your making a little extra greenbacks? Why purchase a desktop when a laptop is better?

skiller said:

I think you're right because right know we have some big problems with the electricity so in that way the laptop is better but the desktop pc is gonna be used on high end task such as video edition, network use, graphic design etc, and is meant to be used as server in my home network so i can have all files in this pc and use the others pc without having the same files in each pc of the home network it would be better all the files in the server in two large hard drives of 250Gb each.

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Personally I have a 3 month old Apple Powerbook G4. I use it for work constantly since Fedex is progressive enough to let me access their network by means of a secure IP connection using Citrix software. When it comes to personal uses though ....

I do a lot of work with digital pictures and video. I currently have 160 gig and 200 gig external harddrives to handle all the files. This goes along with the 80gig internal in the laptop. For fun I do a lot of skydiving which I video here in the states.

I must confess that I have not used the laptop as a server, however there are some shareware programs out there that will let you use the computer as an FTP server. Of course you run the risk of the internet provider of finding out and shutting you down. They get kind of finicky with that stuff here.

leromero said:

True, but let's assign a value to the difference in price. When you really get down to it there is nothing a desktop can do that a technologically current laptop can't do. So what kind of value would you put in the fact that you have a computer that takes up less current, easier to transport, i.e. no extra expense for "special luggage", and mobility to work at the beach if you really wanted to. So, according to Dell the kind of system that I would purchase currently runs about US$950 for a desktop and about US$1300 for a laptop. That's a difference of about US$350.

In the big scheme of things you will need to reach down deep inside you and see if the US$350 premium you are paying for the laptop is worth it. That unfortunately is an individual matter and not everybody will have the same answer. Personally for me the value of my time, mobility, and peace of mind is worth paying the premium. I can purchase for an extra US$100 a solar cell that will let me work on the laptop while it's battery recharges. The amount of business I can conduct will pay for this extra portability and like I stated previously, I can work at the beach if I wanted to.

As you can see, value is purely subjective and is something you learn in Business 101. Who wants to be tied down to a desk when you don't have to? Why not get out and enjoy your surroundings while your making a little extra greenbacks? Why purchase a desktop when a laptop is better?

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Better is a subjective term. Personally I like to leave my work behind when I head out to the beach. To each his own.