This is Steve here,(the husband)
I took my crappy old laptop and put all my footage onto an external PORTABLE hard drive which I got off
Amazon and had it delivered to the room (cheaper than here). My camcorder holds 120gb on internal hard disc (9 hrs HD footage).
I am going to buy a new video camera for our trip next year as the JVC i have is crappy in LOW LIGHT. In fact most of the $800 cameras are bad indoors or low light. I am getting the Canon XA10 its a bit more expensive but would be much more worth it.
We also have the Canon D60 HD stills camera (which will shoot amazing video onto a Flashcard(also buy from Amazon USA much much cheaper than here), I just got 2,,,32gb Class 10 flash cards and that was heaps (2 batteries thou).
I also bought a MACBOOK PRO not to long before the trip as they are awesome for Video Editing and Photo editing etc.
So to sum it up I would get
Canon video camera XA10 is gonna be my weapon of choice.(or Sony if you wanna spend less)
Canon Stills camera (Dont skimp here they are awesome)
Macbook pro laptop
1tb Extrernal Hard Drive
2x 32gb CLASS 10 Flash cards for you stills camera
One thing I will do next time is take a 4 way aussie power board cause the recharging of everything was hard in 2 x US power adapters lol
Hope this helps.
Apple make some good products to make ,making movies really easy.
Regards Steve