Boat Computer?
 

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Samsung_NC10_
14GBK/NPNC10KA03US/V07295/extended/

I needed....well, not quite true....WANTED a new laptop. The 17" monsters
eat batteries, are heavy and cumbersome, too much. So, I started
researching netbooks. Everyone said Samsung NC-10 was great. So, I
ordered this one:

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Samsung_NC10_
14GBK/NPNC10KA03US/V07295/extended/

from Cost Central at best price, on Monday. Got it Fedex Ground today.
$410 to my door. It ran 7 HOURS out of the box, never charged, before it
warned me we only had 10% battery power left. SEVEN HOURS! Amazing....
It recharged in 90 minutes from 8% to full. The battery is 5.2AH, 6 cell.

The touchpad is, obviously, small, but is a combination of laptop touchpad
and iPhone multitouch! Very nice..works great. The hackers have a
touchscreen conversion if you like.

This little 2.8lb netbook will make a helluva nice boat computer. It will
store in any space an 8.5 x 11" report 1.2" thick will fit. 10.2" display
is NOT GLOSSY, NON GLARE and painfully bright for cockpit use....no
reflections staring back at you! The new NC-10 special edition and NC-20
netbooks HAVE A GLOSSY DISPLAY...Useless. I will NOT buy another MIRROR
display.

There's no room for real speakers in it and the speakers in it are
USELESS....but easily connected to external speaker/amp...boat stereo...My
Bluetooth Motorola S9 stereo headset sounds superb!

3 USB ports to connect NMEA stuff to. Win XP Home SP3 runs most nav
software. 160GB tiny hard drive gives it huge storage capacity. There's
116GB free for your stuff. External USB DVD/CD drives and hard drives make
more storage easy.

Thanks to all the hedge funds, speculators and other crooks for driving up
the price of the C and BAC stock to pay for it.....(c;]

Boat Computer?
 

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:32:10 +0000, Larry wrote:

I needed....well, not quite true....WANTED a new laptop. The 17" monsters
eat batteries, are heavy and cumbersome, too much. So, I started
researching netbooks.

In my experience the two most important qualities on a boat computer
are screen brightness and durability. The Panasonic "Toughbook"
models do well on both counts. They are designed for use in the
outdoor environment. I picked up a used CF-48 two years ago for about
$300 and it now has 5,000+ nautical miles on it, all of that spent
exposed to the elements on the flybridge. It has survived numerous
salt spray incidents, one 3 foot drop and a lot of slamming around.

Boat Computer?
 

Boat Computer?
 

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:36:20 -0400, hpeer wrote:



My desktop died so I bought a laptop as a replacement. I got a Dell as
I have them at work and have very good luck. They gave me the option of
a 128Gb SOLID STATE hard drive for $350 extra. I opted for that as, in
my experience, the thing that goes first is usually the hard drive.

Also should make the machine light, cooler, faster and less power hungry.

Good move for a boat.
Soon enough they will be the "standard."
I've been waiting at least 30 years for this.
But I'm very patient.

--Vic

Boat Computer?
 

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:00:18 -0400, wrote:



Radio Shack had a laptop with a solid state "drive" back in the
1980's. We issued them to reporters so they could write and file
stories from the field. Especially handy for Sports and covereage of
government meetings. The reporter would use an acoustic coupler on a
payphone to send the story to our ATEX mainframe at 300 baud.

Maybe this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100_line

R/W memory - and the flash drives are a variant - has always been
expensive in large capacities - until now.
I really liked the IBM Rapid Resume deal, which was ahead of it's
time.
Mapped memory and video to the HD on shutdown, and just remapped back
on reboot. Very fast to get up and running.
Then I just got patient.

--Vic

Ya, if you're patient enough we'll eventually have quantum drives.

Boat Computer?
 

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:00:18 -0400, wrote:



Radio Shack had a laptop with a solid state "drive" back in the
1980's. We issued them to reporters so they could write and file
stories from the field. Especially handy for Sports and covereage of
government meetings. The reporter would use an acoustic coupler on a
payphone to send the story to our ATEX mainframe at 300 baud.

Maybe this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100_line

R/W memory - and the flash drives are a variant - has always been
expensive in large capacities - until now.
I really liked the IBM Rapid Resume deal, which was ahead of it's
time.
Mapped memory and video to the HD on shutdown, and just remapped back
on reboot. Very fast to get up and running.
Then I just got patient.

--Vic

Boat Computer?
 

hpeer wrote in news:49be36ed$0$19669
:

My desktop died so I bought a laptop as a replacement. I got a Dell as
I have them at work and have very good luck. They gave me the option of
a 128Gb SOLID STATE hard drive for $350 extra. I opted for that as, in
my experience, the thing that goes first is usually the hard drive.

Also should make the machine light, cooler, faster and less power hungry.



http://techreport.com/articles.x/13163

Here's a great test report pitting many different laptop drives against the
newest SSDs. Where the SSDs shine is in the cats of power consumption and,
of course, shock resistance. Where the SSDs suck is when you WRITE to
them.....which also wears them enough that the manufacturers have some
moving around software running inside them so the memory areas that do a
LOT of writing isn't done all in one place, wearing holes in the memory
structure causing premature failure. SSD memory HAS a limited number of
write cycles they've stretched out pretty far....but not eliminated.

I've got a 20MB IDE drive from the 1980s that STILL reads and writes just
fine......a credit to its maker.

Boat Computer?
 

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:22:36 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:36:20 -0400, hpeer wrote:



My desktop died so I bought a laptop as a replacement. I got a Dell as
I have them at work and have very good luck. They gave me the option of
a 128Gb SOLID STATE hard drive for $350 extra. I opted for that as, in
my experience, the thing that goes first is usually the hard drive.

Also should make the machine light, cooler, faster and less power hungry.

Good move for a boat.
Soon enough they will be the "standard."
I've been waiting at least 30 years for this.
But I'm very patient.

--Vic

Radio Shack had a laptop with a solid state "drive" back in the
1980's. We issued them to reporters so they could write and file
stories from the field. Especially handy for Sports and covereage of
government meetings. The reporter would use an acoustic coupler on a
payphone to send the story to our ATEX mainframe at 300 baud.




I had an HP of about the same vintage that was solid-state... had a bunch of
ROMs you could add for various programs. Something like a 20-hour battery.


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

Boat Computer?
 

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:35:40 -0700, "Capt. JG"
wrote:

wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:22:36 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:36:20 -0400, hpeer wrote:



My desktop died so I bought a laptop as a replacement. I got a Dell as
I have them at work and have very good luck. They gave me the option of
a 128Gb SOLID STATE hard drive for $350 extra. I opted for that as, in
my experience, the thing that goes first is usually the hard drive.

Also should make the machine light, cooler, faster and less power hungry.

Good move for a boat.
Soon enough they will be the "standard."
I've been waiting at least 30 years for this.
But I'm very patient.

--Vic

Radio Shack had a laptop with a solid state "drive" back in the
1980's. We issued them to reporters so they could write and file
stories from the field. Especially handy for Sports and covereage of
government meetings. The reporter would use an acoustic coupler on a
payphone to send the story to our ATEX mainframe at 300 baud.




I had an HP of about the same vintage that was solid-state... had a bunch of
ROMs you could add for various programs. Something like a 20-hour battery.

These radio shack units came with basic word processor, etc, already
onboard. It was powered by... drum roll please! ... 4 double A
batteries, which would last about a week or two under normal use.
Probably in the neighborhood of 20 hours. If your batteries were going
dead, help was at any drugstore or supermarket.

Boat Computer?
 

hpeer wrote:
wrote:
On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:26:53 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 05:32:10 +0000, Larry wrote:

I needed....well, not quite true....WANTED a new laptop. The 17" monsters
eat batteries, are heavy and cumbersome, too much. So, I started
researching netbooks.
In my experience the two most important qualities on a boat computer
are screen brightness and durability. The Panasonic "Toughbook"
models do well on both counts. They are designed for use in the
outdoor environment. I picked up a used CF-48 two years ago for about
$300 and it now has 5,000+ nautical miles on it, all of that spent
exposed to the elements on the flybridge. It has survived numerous
salt spray incidents, one 3 foot drop and a lot of slamming around.
Amen. I bought a used toughbook CF-29 for cheap a few years ago. Came
out of a police vehicle, so I'm sure it's had coffee spilled on it
many times. The battery was no good, but I just removed it, and the
thing runs just fine on 12 volts from the boat. It has enough intenal
regulation that it isn't affected by transient overvoltages. Unlike
"normal" laptops, this one is designed for viewing in direct daylight.


My desktop died so I bought a laptop as a replacement. I got a Dell as
I have them at work and have very good luck. They gave me the option of
a 128Gb SOLID STATE hard drive for $350 extra. I opted for that as, in
my experience, the thing that goes first is usually the hard drive.

Also should make the machine light, cooler, faster and less power hungry.

And a broken disk much earlier, flash memory has a limited number
of write cycles.......