On Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:13:37 -0500, "Armond Perretta"
wrote:

SaltAir wrote:

Ocean PC were a *marinized* PC out of Seattle. They are no longer in
production. The company is gone.

One of the reasons they sunk is that it's easier to buy 4 conventional
laptops and let them rot in the locker than it is to buy a single
under-powered and over-hyped "marinized" PC.

Yeah, that was sort of my point. You can buy "fleet" laptops of the
semi-generic PIII, 256Meg RAM, 15 in screen variety from clearance
places for about $200-$300 each and just use those. They will run all
the nav and com software you wish, and in fact are more than you need
in most applications, as such software, due to its intended market, is
one to two generations behind, say, the latest 3-D action games or the
latest video-editing packages.

You can go even more cheaply and more sensibly, in my opinion, if you
have the room, with a vented box stowed somewhere with a minitower PC
in it. A USB hub and a wireless router combined with IR should allow
you to operate the thing without actually touching it much, and you
could keep a cheap laptop in a silicon-packet-filled plastic bag for
when you needed to take something ashore or into the cockpit. Put an
LCD screen on an armature in the companionway with an IR sensor and
voila! PC power without getting the "brains" wet.

R.