I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay

On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 20:11:38 GMT, "just me"
wrote:

I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay



In my opinion, you should worry more about water than moisture. A
laptop will soldier on through moist air with no problems, especially
when it is on. Let a drip from a port find its way to the keyboard
and it's probably all over. When the laptop is off, there is some
potential for condensation inside as the temperature cycles around the
dew point. To avoid this, store the laptop in a case when not in use,
preferably with dessicant to dry things out. I've seen people use
transparent monitor covers to keep drips away, but I'd be a bit
concerned about heat. One of my laptops has such deficient cooling
that I'm thinking about building an external cooling system for it.

I lust after a ruggedized laptop like a Panasonic Toughbook, but I
can't justify the price. You can buy 2 normal laptops with superior
performance for the same price and just keep one as a spare. Or buy
just one and get one of those extended warranties that fix it no
matter *what* happens. Or, if performance is not a problem, lots of
old Pentium and Pentiuim II Toughbooks show up on Ebay for cheap.

Whatever you get, do make sure to strap it down well. Even Toughbooks
don't particularly like to fly across the cabin. If you have critical
data on it, you should be more than usually diligent about backups.
An internal CD burner comes in handy for that.

__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at world wide wiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/

One thing that I received as a gift last year was a flexible, rollable
keyboard. It works through a USB port and everykey is encapsulated in a
rubbery plastic. You can spill any liquid on it and it keeps on working. It
allows me to set up the laptop in a way that protects the laptop keyboard
from potential spills.

Tom


"Glen "Wiley" Wilson" wrote in
message ...
On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 20:11:38 GMT, "just me"
wrote:

I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay



In my opinion, you should worry more about water than moisture. A
laptop will soldier on through moist air with no problems, especially
when it is on. Let a drip from a port find its way to the keyboard
and it's probably all over. When the laptop is off, there is some
potential for condensation inside as the temperature cycles around the
dew point. To avoid this, store the laptop in a case when not in use,
preferably with dessicant to dry things out. I've seen people use
transparent monitor covers to keep drips away, but I'd be a bit
concerned about heat. One of my laptops has such deficient cooling
that I'm thinking about building an external cooling system for it.

I lust after a ruggedized laptop like a Panasonic Toughbook, but I
can't justify the price. You can buy 2 normal laptops with superior
performance for the same price and just keep one as a spare. Or buy
just one and get one of those extended warranties that fix it no
matter *what* happens. Or, if performance is not a problem, lots of
old Pentium and Pentiuim II Toughbooks show up on Ebay for cheap.

Whatever you get, do make sure to strap it down well. Even Toughbooks
don't particularly like to fly across the cabin. If you have critical
data on it, you should be more than usually diligent about backups.
An internal CD burner comes in handy for that.

__________________________________________________ __________
Glen "Wiley" Wilson usenet1 SPAMNIX at world wide wiley dot com
To reply, lose the capitals and do the obvious.

Take a look at cpRepeater, my NMEA data integrator, repeater, and
logger at http://www.worldwidewiley.com/

Glen "Wiley" Wilson wrote:

when it is on. Let a drip from a port find its way to the keyboard
and it's probably all over. When the laptop is off, there is some

Depends on how lucky you are. I once was called, I was a sys admin, to
look at a laptop because "the mouse doesn't work right." I grabbed a
hardware guy and we wandered down to look a the afflicted machine.
While looking about I noticed some sort of liquid below the unit and
mentioned it to the HW guy. He picked up the unit and accidentally
tipped it slightly, about a tablespoon of coffee poured out onto the
desk. Shut it down, took it back to the office, disassembled it, he
took the keyboard home and ran it through the dishwasher. Cleaned up as
much coffee as possible from inside of the unit, reassembled, took it
back to them and powered it up. Took about 4 hours total.

"just me" wrote in message
news:_Xaid.361334$D%.112227@attbi_s51...
I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay

I'm in the process of building my system.

I picked up a Toughbook 48 (new) with a broken screen, very cheaply. It will
be mounted in a cabinet, out of harms way. It will drive an external LCD
screen, keyboard, mouse and CDROM. The screen will be fixed to the bulkhead,
out of harms way; the CDROM will be fixed somewhere accessible, but
reasonably safe; and the keyboard and mouseon the chart table .The keyboard
and mouse are the most at risk from water spills, however they are
disposable( I will have a store of s/h replacements at a couple of dollars
each.). Backup will be by a USB external HD mounted alongside the laptop.

Not sure yet about heat dispersal from the laptop. May need to install a fan
or a heatsink.

I've had a standard laptop onboard for a couple of years through
all sorts of WX with only one failure. It actually failed after I took
it off of the boat and had in indoors. I did purchase the extended
warranty so the failure didn;t cost me a penny to have repaired.

Doug
s/v CAllista

"just me" wrote in message
news:_Xaid.361334$D%.112227@attbi_s51...
I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay

just me wrote:
I need to purchase a laptop to keep on my boat while cruising and living
aboard.
I'm concerned about moisture and salt air.
Any advice and recommendations appreciated.
Thanks, Jay

Look up "Itronix" on Ebay. One seller, sri_sales moves quite a few of
them. First generation Pentiums mostly but people are just foolish
about needing P3-P4 processors for the kinds of things most people do
with them.

I bought a Dell a few years ago and bought the extended warranty. I asked if
it covered water damage like if it fell in the ocean and they said as long
as I went in after it they would warranty it. Another option if you have the
room is a desktop with a flat screen. Dell had new ones for $450 + - with a
free upgrade to a 15" LCD

I've been looking at the same thing, putting a computer on my boat. But my
boat is a smaller 21' trailer-sailor and there is only a small chance that
I'll be in salt water.
I've been looking at a mini-itx board, these are very small motherboards and
use very little electricity, some of them don't even need cooling fans so
the motherboard could be mounted in a watertight enclosure with only the
heatsink exposed to the air. These motherboards run about $150.00 with CPU
chip (aprox 1Ghz) and they also have adapters to run on 12V power. These
motherboards also have monitor out, video out, USB, audio out, network
(10/100), and the normal seriel ports.
If your interested do a Yahoo search for "mini-itx", they have a great site
with lots of information.
I also own one of those waterproof keyboards, they are great for wet/dirty
areas (I got a $200.00 award for suggesting they use them at work) the only
problem with them is that the keys are not quite as responsive as normal
keyboards and typing with them is slower and slightly less accurate.
I would use an optical mouse, find one with a sealed bottom and if you are
really worried about water add a saran wrap type covering over the top
(rules out wheel mouses).
The hard drive and optical drive could be mounted in waterproof enclosures
with the only possible problem being heat build up, as I intend to be
sailing in mostly fresh water I do not plan on using a waterproof container,
but will mount them in an way to reduce the chances of rain/splashes hitting
them (maybe in a cabinet).
The entire motherboard, power supply, hard drive and optical drive should
take up the same amount of space, or less, than a shoe box.
I will probably go for a LCD screen mounted so I can see it from the helm, I
have a Deluo GPS antenne and mapping software that will let me use it as a
navigation package.
I love the MP3 music format, a single CD-ROM can hold about 10 hours of
music and Winamp is a great MP3 player, the ITX has the normal audio out
ports so that it can be hooked into a stereo system (even a car/boat 12V
system), because the ITX format also has TV out, I plan on adding a small
13" Tv in the cabin and with a DVD-ROM drive, I will have a small
entertainment center. With a large enough hard drive you could store
hundreds of hours of music and with software such as Virtualdrive you could
store any number of DVD movies (and not even need a CD/DVD-ROM drive).
The ITX board also has a network port built-in, because I plan on storing
the boat at home I plan on being able to plug it into my home network. If I
do store my boat in a slip (a possiblity) I will be able to load data on my
laptop, hook into the network port, transfer the data, and leave the laptop
safely on dry land.
This will let me upload music and movies or any other data to the harddrive
before I leave for a sail and have a huge selection while I'm sailing, but a
CD/DVD-ROM drive will let me have even more choices enroute.

I do not intend to imply that music, movies and entertainment are more
important than sailing, my system is intended to aid in navigation while
underway, supply music if desired and make my time aboard as relaxing and
enjoyable as possible. All of this at the lowest possible price, with as
much reliability as possible.

Eric

"Phil" wrote in message
om...

I bought a Dell a few years ago and bought the extended warranty. I asked
if
it covered water damage like if it fell in the ocean and they said as long
as I went in after it they would warranty it. Another option if you have
the
room is a desktop with a flat screen. Dell had new ones for $450 + - with
a
free upgrade to a 15" LCD

I built one of the mini-itx systems, using the ME6000 motherboard. The claim of "no
fan needed" is a bit overstated, since if you work it hard it will overheat unless the
ventilation is perfect. I played with a number of fans to find the minimal (i.e.
quietest) for my case and ended up with a small cpu fan.

The software from VIA was also disappointing - I don't think they have ever supplied a
driver that properly plays a DVD movie taking full advantage of the built-in decoder,
though I have found a combination that's not too bad. Also, I had a lot of trouble
running with win98 - all is well with xp.

Also, the processor speed lags mainstream offerings. I think they're up to 1.2 GHz,
but that won't be fanless.

On the plus side, the case is the size of a laptop. The power consumption is under 20
Watts. It has all of the modern connections: firewire, USB, etc. It has two PCI
slots and can handle normal drives, though you'll probably want notebook style slim
DVD drives and 2.5 inch disks.

If you want a dedicated system to run nav software, you can make a fairly small
package, the size of a car radio.

And best of all, you can open it up and swap out components just like a desktop box.




"Eric Currier" wrote in message
news:0Okid.98401$tU4.30551@okepread06...
I've been looking at the same thing, putting a computer on my boat. But my
boat is a smaller 21' trailer-sailor and there is only a small chance that
I'll be in salt water.
I've been looking at a mini-itx board, these are very small motherboards and
use very little electricity, some of them don't even need cooling fans so
the motherboard could be mounted in a watertight enclosure with only the
heatsink exposed to the air. These motherboards run about $150.00 with CPU
chip (aprox 1Ghz) and they also have adapters to run on 12V power. These
motherboards also have monitor out, video out, USB, audio out, network
(10/100), and the normal seriel ports.
If your interested do a Yahoo search for "mini-itx", they have a great site
with lots of information.
I also own one of those waterproof keyboards, they are great for wet/dirty
areas (I got a $200.00 award for suggesting they use them at work) the only
problem with them is that the keys are not quite as responsive as normal
keyboards and typing with them is slower and slightly less accurate.
I would use an optical mouse, find one with a sealed bottom and if you are
really worried about water add a saran wrap type covering over the top
(rules out wheel mouses).
The hard drive and optical drive could be mounted in waterproof enclosures
with the only possible problem being heat build up, as I intend to be
sailing in mostly fresh water I do not plan on using a waterproof container,
but will mount them in an way to reduce the chances of rain/splashes hitting
them (maybe in a cabinet).
The entire motherboard, power supply, hard drive and optical drive should
take up the same amount of space, or less, than a shoe box.
I will probably go for a LCD screen mounted so I can see it from the helm, I
have a Deluo GPS antenne and mapping software that will let me use it as a
navigation package.
I love the MP3 music format, a single CD-ROM can hold about 10 hours of
music and Winamp is a great MP3 player, the ITX has the normal audio out
ports so that it can be hooked into a stereo system (even a car/boat 12V
system), because the ITX format also has TV out, I plan on adding a small
13" Tv in the cabin and with a DVD-ROM drive, I will have a small
entertainment center. With a large enough hard drive you could store
hundreds of hours of music and with software such as Virtualdrive you could
store any number of DVD movies (and not even need a CD/DVD-ROM drive).
The ITX board also has a network port built-in, because I plan on storing
the boat at home I plan on being able to plug it into my home network. If I
do store my boat in a slip (a possiblity) I will be able to load data on my
laptop, hook into the network port, transfer the data, and leave the laptop
safely on dry land.
This will let me upload music and movies or any other data to the harddrive
before I leave for a sail and have a huge selection while I'm sailing, but a
CD/DVD-ROM drive will let me have even more choices enroute.

I do not intend to imply that music, movies and entertainment are more
important than sailing, my system is intended to aid in navigation while
underway, supply music if desired and make my time aboard as relaxing and
enjoyable as possible. All of this at the lowest possible price, with as
much reliability as possible.

Eric

"Phil" wrote in message
om...

I bought a Dell a few years ago and bought the extended warranty. I asked
if
it covered water damage like if it fell in the ocean and they said as long
as I went in after it they would warranty it. Another option if you have
the
room is a desktop with a flat screen. Dell had new ones for $450 + - with
a
free upgrade to a 15" LCD