Parallax wrote:

Basically am a math physics geek who dreams up weird optics for a
living whenever I am s'posed to be doing other things. A lot of this
is pencil and paper but ya know, spread sheets are nice. I got no
probs pokin round in the innards of a computer but have learned to
hate the seeming arbitrariness of software. I could still program in
Fortran if needed but Vis Basic is nice. I really wouldnt use it for
movies and would only send e-mail to family which is redundant with a
cell phone so the only reason for having it is for when I get bored
and wanna poke around at some problem.

So why are you wasting our time by asking if you should have one?
Either do it or don't, it really doesn't matter. You haven't given any
reason to have it other than maybe it would be nice if you dreamed up
something to use it for. So why are you asking us?

Jeff Morris wrote in message ...
Parallax wrote:

Basically am a math physics geek who dreams up weird optics for a
living whenever I am s'posed to be doing other things. A lot of this
is pencil and paper but ya know, spread sheets are nice. I got no
probs pokin round in the innards of a computer but have learned to
hate the seeming arbitrariness of software. I could still program in
Fortran if needed but Vis Basic is nice. I really wouldnt use it for
movies and would only send e-mail to family which is redundant with a
cell phone so the only reason for having it is for when I get bored
and wanna poke around at some problem.

So why are you wasting our time by asking if you should have one?
Either do it or don't, it really doesn't matter. You haven't given any
reason to have it other than maybe it would be nice if you dreamed up
something to use it for. So why are you asking us?

I suppose that I am wondering if it is really useful for anything
else. Posting all of this has just about made up my mind though, NO
computer. I realized all I really wanted it for was fun, not
communication.

I just bought a laptop with DVD player and a television output. I can watch
DVD's on the laptop screen or hook it up tp my TV at home. Works nice.

"Parallax" wrote in message
om...
I thought I'd have left on my cruise by now but am still finishing my
nesting dinghy so while that is happening, I am wondering about taking
a computer. Is a computer really desireable on a cruise? I like to do
weird calculations with spreadsheets and work out bizaare optics for
fun and profit. Supposedly you can watch a movie on a computer
although I have never done so and am almost unable to watch movies but
a cruise on a sailboat has a lot of free time...I would never trust my
navigation to computer charts so that isnt a reason. Is being in
touch via e-mail and news groups really desireable or even practical?
At work, we have a plethora of new computers but all are too big and
run on 110 volts. My electrical capacity will be limited to when the
engine is running, whatever charge is in my 2 batteries, and whatever
my 10 watt solar panel makes. This argues for a laptop.
My last experience with a laptop had me trying to get it stolen in
airports but nobody ever took it. Even though it had a damned crappy
power supply, I kept it going far longer than I should have by
open-chassis surgery and soldering iron. When it finally did die, I
gleefully extracted its hard drive and installed it in an adapter for
my current home computer so that every time I see it I imagine it as a
brain in a jar and I have gotten my revenge. I can almost imagine it
saying "Dave, I know we have had our problems but.....Daisy,
Daisy...."
So, what do y'all think?
Is there any practical way to do e-mail while underway?
Should I just go back to using my slide rule for calculations?

VERY, VERY late to this thread, but you need to look at islandtimepc.com .
They offer a very low power computer that operates on 12 volts and
supports DVDs. chartplotting, email, TV, whatever you might want a
computer to do. I have a good friend who has one and he loves it. I'm
buying mine soon. Its based on a line of Windows supported computers that
are optimized for low power applications.

pander

Parallax wrote:

I thought I'd have left on my cruise by now but am still finishing my
nesting dinghy so while that is happening, I am wondering about taking
a computer. Is a computer really desireable on a cruise? I like to do
weird calculations with spreadsheets and work out bizaare optics for
fun and profit. Supposedly you can watch a movie on a computer
although I have never done so and am almost unable to watch movies but
a cruise on a sailboat has a lot of free time...I would never trust my
navigation to computer charts so that isnt a reason. Is being in
touch via e-mail and news groups really desireable or even practical?
At work, we have a plethora of new computers but all are too big and
run on 110 volts. My electrical capacity will be limited to when the
engine is running, whatever charge is in my 2 batteries, and whatever
my 10 watt solar panel makes. This argues for a laptop.
My last experience with a laptop had me trying to get it stolen in
airports but nobody ever took it. Even though it had a damned crappy
power supply, I kept it going far longer than I should have by
open-chassis surgery and soldering iron. When it finally did die, I
gleefully extracted its hard drive and installed it in an adapter for
my current home computer so that every time I see it I imagine it as a
brain in a jar and I have gotten my revenge. I can almost imagine it
saying "Dave, I know we have had our problems but.....Daisy,
Daisy...."
So, what do y'all think?
Is there any practical way to do e-mail while underway?
Should I just go back to using my slide rule for calculations?

The problem with a system of this type is that there's no easy way to
bring it to shore to an Internet cafe to download e-mail. If you want a
general purpose computer, then this looks OK. IMHO it's expensive for a
1 Ghz macbine.

-- Geoff

Pete Anderson wrote in
:

VERY, VERY late to this thread, but you need to look at
islandtimepc.com . They offer a very low power computer that operates
on 12 volts and supports DVDs. chartplotting, email, TV, whatever you
might want a computer to do. I have a good friend who has one and he
loves it. I'm buying mine soon. Its based on a line of Windows
supported computers that are optimized for low power applications.

pander

Parallax wrote:

I thought I'd have left on my cruise by now but am still finishing my
nesting dinghy so while that is happening, I am wondering about
taking a computer. Is a computer really desireable on a cruise? I
like to do weird calculations with spreadsheets and work out bizaare
optics for fun and profit. Supposedly you can watch a movie on a
computer although I have never done so and am almost unable to watch
movies but a cruise on a sailboat has a lot of free time...I would
never trust my navigation to computer charts so that isnt a reason.
Is being in touch via e-mail and news groups really desireable or
even practical? At work, we have a plethora of new computers but all
are too big and run on 110 volts. My electrical capacity will be
limited to when the engine is running, whatever charge is in my 2
batteries, and whatever my 10 watt solar panel makes. This argues
for a laptop. My last experience with a laptop had me trying to get
it stolen in airports but nobody ever took it. Even though it had a
damned crappy power supply, I kept it going far longer than I should
have by open-chassis surgery and soldering iron. When it finally did
die, I gleefully extracted its hard drive and installed it in an
adapter for my current home computer so that every time I see it I
imagine it as a brain in a jar and I have gotten my revenge. I can
almost imagine it saying "Dave, I know we have had our problems
but.....Daisy, Daisy...."
So, what do y'all think?
Is there any practical way to do e-mail while underway?
Should I just go back to using my slide rule for calculations?

On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 14:36:43 GMT, Geoff Schultz
wrote:

The problem with a system of this type is that there's no easy way to
bring it to shore to an Internet cafe to download e-mail. If you want a
general purpose computer, then this looks OK. IMHO it's expensive for a
1 Ghz macbine.

Any kind of specialty PC (extra-rugged, low-power, whatever) will cost
more, and I think the "best buy" here can be dictated pretty easily.

1) Portability. A laptop is always more expensive than a box, but a
box can be better protected. On the other hand, you can't take a box
ashore.

2) Flexibility. Box wins for component upgrades and configurations in
most cases. Also, the various "black boxes" that bring nav, GPS,
weather and radar data to your PC are going to connect more readily to
a box than a laptop in many cases.

3) Power draw-down. Are you "on" constantly or not? Even a bulky, hot
350 W desktop unit won't draw much if you leave it off most of the
time. On the other hand, if you are building your electrical system
(charging, inverting, etc.) around the idea of having electronics,
then any PC while running probably draws less than say, any radar and
many common items like spreader lights and running a hair dryer.

4) Current software requirements. Laptops are always less bright for
the buck than boxes, but you have to look at the software requirements
to determine if this is a problem. I can't find any charting/nav or
comm software that requires more than, say, a PIII, 256 Meg of RAM
level of "strength", and that means you can spend, say, $400 for a
superannuated "fleet" Dell or Compaq laptop and run nav all day long.

5) Thieving and replacement. Laptops can be stolen, but if you put a
PC inside of a locked vented mini-locker, it looks like any
miscellaneous electronics. If you use a "mini-ATX" motherboard and
case, you can make them quite inconspicuous. Wireless networking can
reduce the cable runs, as well.

Taking all this into consideration, I would say I would have a
reasonably current "box" PC squirrelled away on board with a portable
LCD monitor and wireless accessories. That way, I could swing a
charting screen into the companionway on an armature and use an IR
mouse to change screens/displays.

I would have a three year old laptop, strategically covered in duct
tape, to take ashore or to compose e-mails on deck or wherever. It
would be networked when needed to the box and used to back-up logs,
ongoing work and "ship's data".

Of course, I plan to work while I cruise. Your situation may vary.

R.

This is a basic mini-itx that you could put together yourself in a few
hours for about $400 less. If you have some parts lying around (I had a
notebook dvd player, plus various keyboards and mice) you can save
more. I even had a small disk with win 98 loaded, but ended up with a
bigger disk and XP.

You can buy all of the components from the company that makes the case:
http://www.caseoutlet.com/shopdispla...2DITX+Syste m

Or you could shop around and save a bit more. It really is quite simple
to put it all together. If you buy a place like caseoutlet, they should
do all of the assembly for you.

Overall, I'm happy with mine, but I am a bit disappointed with
price/performance. You can get a better performing laptop for less
money. Also, it was advertised as "silent" but the case came with a
noisy fan and it took some experimenting to get it as quiet as I wanted.
(I used a small cpu fan.) On the plus side, this is a notebook-like
system that I can replace any or all of the components on. For
instance, I can upgrade the motherboard for about $140 and an hour's work.



Pete Anderson wrote:
VERY, VERY late to this thread, but you need to look at islandtimepc.com .
They offer a very low power computer that operates on 12 volts and
supports DVDs. chartplotting, email, TV, whatever you might want a
computer to do. I have a good friend who has one and he loves it. I'm
buying mine soon. Its based on a line of Windows supported computers that
are optimized for low power applications.

pander

Parallax wrote:


I thought I'd have left on my cruise by now but am still finishing my
nesting dinghy so while that is happening, I am wondering about taking
a computer. Is a computer really desireable on a cruise? I like to do
weird calculations with spreadsheets and work out bizaare optics for
fun and profit. Supposedly you can watch a movie on a computer
although I have never done so and am almost unable to watch movies but
a cruise on a sailboat has a lot of free time...I would never trust my
navigation to computer charts so that isnt a reason. Is being in
touch via e-mail and news groups really desireable or even practical?
At work, we have a plethora of new computers but all are too big and
run on 110 volts. My electrical capacity will be limited to when the
engine is running, whatever charge is in my 2 batteries, and whatever
my 10 watt solar panel makes. This argues for a laptop.
My last experience with a laptop had me trying to get it stolen in
airports but nobody ever took it. Even though it had a damned crappy
power supply, I kept it going far longer than I should have by
open-chassis surgery and soldering iron. When it finally did die, I
gleefully extracted its hard drive and installed it in an adapter for
my current home computer so that every time I see it I imagine it as a
brain in a jar and I have gotten my revenge. I can almost imagine it
saying "Dave, I know we have had our problems but.....Daisy,
Daisy...."
So, what do y'all think?
Is there any practical way to do e-mail while underway?
Should I just go back to using my slide rule for calculations?

On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 14:36:43 GMT,
Geoff Schultz wrote:
The problem with a system of this type is that there's no easy way to
bring it to shore to an Internet cafe to download e-mail. If you want a
general purpose computer, then this looks OK. IMHO it's expensive for a
1 Ghz macbine.

-- Geoff


I have a "multilayered" approach to this. Mostly because I like buying
doodads and playing with them.

I have a Laptop, nuff said. I also have a Pentab (old Fujitsu 1200,
P120) running Linux, which happily connects via wired ethernet,
wireless, USB, or IR. (USB requires minor h/w hack, but the newer
versions of the HW don't) They run about $100-$200 on ebay if you keep
an eye out. I also have a USB key (128MB) with a 64MB bootable partion
and a small Linux install, the other 64MB contains some apps for
MS-Windows (putty, an ssh client, and a couple of others) and my home
directory. Usually I have a Knoppix CD also, which will boot on most any
modern intel machine, and happily use the USB keydrive for storage.

With this stuff, I can use pretty much any option of connection, modem,
ethernet, wireless, booting some other machine, or IR via a cellphone.

I suppose I could add an accoustic coupled modem, maybe an arcnet card,
but I think I'll skip that...

--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Must I hold a candle to my shames?
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"

My wife and I are full time cruisers. Have been for 4 years.
We have several computers aboard, 1 laptop & 1 desktop (Singapore
Shuttle)
Use the laptop for navigation, weather-fax and sat phone connections &
the Shuttle for marina applications.
A word of warning about power supplies.
We were caught in a storm when using the laptop via the inverter. Water
entered the boat & caused a fire as a result of a 240V plug being
shorted. Fire was quickly extinguished.
Since that time only use the laptop on a voltage doubler or from the
house batteries. Most laptop will work on 12-14VDC. ACER Travelmate.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Tony
S/V Ambrosia