Invariably, when I go off on one of my day trips, I find myself wishing I had my records with me, especially when I see familiar names in the course of my travels. One easy solution to this issue is simply to carry a laptop with me with the data loaded, though there are some caveats to that approach. Since my primary research database is actually housed online, my local copy is rarely as updated as it should be, so I don’t necessarily want to make additions to the local copy and the upload to the main database, unless I have downloaded and updated that local copy first. Ideally, this happens on a regular basis.
Since my laptop is set up as a dual-booting machine machine with both Windows Vista and LinuxMint, I have a choice of programs in which to store the data. For my purposes, I am more likely to use a Linux-based program called GRAMPS to keep the data accessible, but I haven’t had a chance to play with that program much yet. If nothing else, I can always use a simple text editor to make notes of new data for uploading and updating once I’m back home.