Hey I joined the forum a few days ago. I have plans for an 800w solar powered sprinter over in the conversion forum. While I haven't began vandwelling yet, I'm pretty young and an app developer so I think I can help a few of the older folks with computer related stuff. <br><br><strong>Internet</strong><br><img rel="lightbox" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/07/clearspot-4g-apollo.jpg" class="bbc_img"><br>I highly recommend the clearwire 4g apollo hotspot. You'll have to check clearwires coverage area to see if it's usable for you. This hotspot uses a $40 a month 4g data plan and converts that signal into wifi for all of your computers to use. It has a built in battery and charges over usb, so you can either plug it into an ac adapter, or a usb cigarette receptacle for dc. If your computer has a usb port you can use that as well. <br><br>Why this hotspot instead of their cheaper ones?<br><br><img rel="lightbox" src="" class="bbc_img"><br>You're not going to get great signal inside of a metal van are you? This antenna is compatible with that hotspot and can be mounted outside to get better signal. It connects to the hotspot and the wifi in your van metal will be great since the signal will be more concentrated inside your metal box.<br>http://www.ebay.com/itm/Booster-Ant...et-More-Speed-4G-NEW-/160904722825#vi-content<br><br>If clearwire isn't available in your area, t-mobile is the next best bet. They have more affordable data plans compared to at&t, sprint, and verizon. The service isn't quite as great as clearwire's, but still good. They also don't sell data to law enforcement, which is a practice I'm sure we can all appreciate considering the run-ins with police a few of you receive. <br><br><strong>Mobile Devices</strong><br>My first thing I want to get out of the way before starting this topic is that I'm not an apple guy. As an app developer this platform is so locked down that it makes getting serious work done more difficult. So while I have this bias, I want to state that iOS on ipads or iphones can be a little more friendly for older folks without much experience, but if you're a quick learner (which I assume most of you are) android is quickly taking apple's marketshare and is a lot more open and cheaper to use. Android is a free operating system made by google which is free to use by manufacturers, iOS is a proprietary operating system by apple limited to only devices made by apple. There are tons of android devices which range in price, and a limited selection of iOS devices which are more expensive and generally less featured than similarly priced android devices.<br><br>So with that said lets get into devices.<br><br><img rel="lightbox" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02215/tf300a_2215267b.jpg" class="bbc_img"><br>The first device I want to recommend to this forum is the Asus Transformer 300 (TF300). This device gets some of the best battery life on the market with a whopping 12-16 hours of on screen time per charge. The reason it gets so much battery life is because the tablet has a removable keyboard dock with an additional battery inside of it. It also has 3 storage expansion options, micro sd on the tablet, usb and full sized sd on the dock. Do not underestimate that usb port, because you can connect a 2.5in external hard drive to it and have a terabyte of storage space! The keyboard is small, but usable if you don't want to type on touch screens. It has wifi to connect to the 4g hotspot, but no 3g/4g antennas of it's own (keep in this can save battery life). This device is great because if you charge it at a coffee shop while you get your cup of joe each morning, you'll have enough battery life to last you the rest of the day... never requiring van power.<br><br>This device runs around $300-400, the dock is purchased separately. If cost is an issue consider looking for aftermarket devices on ebay or craigslist, it can really save some cash vs a new unit.<br><br>I personally have a transformer prime (TF201) which is the model before this. It uses an aluminum body instead of plastic like the tf300, which can be worse for signal strength if you're trying to siphon someone's wifi, but it's solid as a rock. I've dropped this thing over 6 times and still can't seem to break it (once on tile, twice on concrete, 3 times on wood).<br><br>Since the topic of accidents was mentioned, squaretrade offers extended warranties for $70 which cover accidents drops and spills for 2 years - which insure you for what you paid for the device. I picked up one of these as well. If this interests you, be sure to do it immediately after buying your (new) device, because you have a short window before your device becomes ineligible (they can't insure your ancient Pentium machine for what you paid for it lol).<br><br><img rel="lightbox" src="http://rack.0.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEyLzA2LzI3LzExXzIxXzQ1XzM1Ml9maWxl/408f2b18" class="bbc_img"><br>Another device worth mentioning is the nexus 7, it's also by asus - but commissioned by google. The strength of this device is that it's dirt cheap ($200 new) and one of the more powerful tablets on the market. If you're a phone hacker like me, you'll find that the community support for this device is amazing over on xda-developers.com. Because it's a google nexus device, it runs on open source android and is pretty stable because it's running a clean OS that hasn't been skinned by another manufacturer. Since it's cheap it does come with a drawback, it doesn't have many storage expansion options (apple devices have 0) apart from the mini-usb port which charges it. Fortunately a few adapters are made for it, so you'll have to search around.<br><br>There are plenty of other android tablets that are worth recommending, but I'm going to keep it simple with these two. I use the TF201, my girlfriend uses the nexus 7. <br><br><img rel="lightbox" src="http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/372/images/5b.jpg" class="bbc_img"><br><br>I also have a lenovo thinkpad x220 for programming in a linux or windows environment. I highly recommend lenovo's devices because they're built like bricks and made for business use to last, there are even videos of nerds pumping lightning from tesla coils into older t40s - the thinkpad booted right back up. <br><br>The drawback from having a laptop, is that x86/x64 processors aren't as power efficient as android/iOS SoCs. My laptop battery life is less than 25% of what the tablets can get. Granted, it's an i5 powerhouse - computing is quickly moving towards a mobile platform of phones, tablets, and convertible tablets like the transformers. Another gripe is powerful laptops generally run at 3x the price as powerful tablets. If you're not a programmer, consider switching your computing uses over to more efficient tablet computers, if there's software you're hooked on, it's likely ported over to android, or will be in the future. <br><br>With that said I'll conclude this topic. If you have a device worth mentioning or an ISP worth recommending, please feel free to share it in this thread.<br><br>