Speeding up lightroom?

[The_Traveler]

I'm travelling for several years in quite dangerous countries and also trying to stretch my budget as far as I can so getting a new an expensive computer isn't a good option for me right now. Need a quick fix until I settle down somewhere and start making money again.

This entire thread is crazy.

Traveling for 'several years in quite dangerous country' will be grotesquely expensive and yet the OP is not willing to upgrade equipment to save literally hours every download and backup.
LR has huge overhead due to its database component but this can't be used because he can't have more the 100 photos in a catalog; that would be 3+ catalogs a day in good shooting times.
OP has saddled minimal equipment with OS and software that runs well only on much more powerful chip and more memory.

Maybe I haven't traveled in 'quite dangerous country' but I've traveled a lot in marginal circumstances and the last thing I would want is overtaxed equipment.

I would:
1) buy a laptop that would handle Lightroom and an external HD for backup (a Dell with I5 & 4 GB RAM is $399)
or
2) Download and learn to use a variety of Unix that will run fast with tiny overhead on underpowered machines.
Forget Windows 7 or 8 for underpowered machines.
Even Ubuntu with a graphical interface is much lighter on equipment than Windows
Use Linux software to download and do some basic editing.
Shoot Raw + jpg and edit the jpgs until back in base.