Should we bring the laptop???

A laptop is great to use to download and store digital photos. So it's like a five pound flash card in that respect. But it's a pain if you're trying to use it for e-mail. You can rely on Internet cafes for that.

Though you didn't say where you are traveling to, if your laptop can pick up wireless, I found that in France and IReland, there were a lot of places that had free WiFi. I had an Ipod touch and not a laptop but found that it was easy to find WiFi to send email, check weather, etc. A lot of the TI's, public libraries and even small B&B's are offering it.

Hope this helps.

Thank helps, thanks.

We are bringing an iphone, which I think will be able to find some wifi signals.

We are going to Paris, Alps, Germany-but most of the time will be spent in Italy. I'm not sure how much wifi is available there in Italy?

In regards to storing images, we have plenty of digital camera cards, so we won't even use the laptop for that.

It sounds like the internet cafe is the way to go for email.

Rely on the internet cafe; you will find them almost everywhere, and leave your laptop at home.

That's one more thing you won't have to keep track of. If you have plenty of memory cards you're better off; they don't take any space.