I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

You might want to think about getting one that has a real serial port. Many
of the new computers don't include them anymore and if you want to hook up
your GPS you will need the extra complication and cost of a serial to USB
converter cable and software that may or may not work very well. Other than
that, I would think a laptop for a relatively hazardous boating enviornment
should probably be on the low end cost wise. You can still get some pretty
powerful machines that come in around a thousand dollars or so and will do
everything you need.

I've been in the market too and have lately been looking here
http://www.powernotebooks.com/index.php3 .
Along with a sterling reputation, they seem to have some pretty interesting
machines at good prices. Last week Best Buy had a Toshiba A15-S127 Satellite
on sale for $699. I almost went for it but it has no serial port and old USB
1.1 ports so I decided to keep looking.


"John Nagy" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

By coincidence, I mentioned this yesterday to a pal who just bought a
liveaboard and was mulling over getting a desktop for the nav station:

"Personally, I would go for the laptop for heat/power consumption
issues, and add components via FireWire/USB as needed. A desktop
underway pulls a large number of watts, you know, whereas a laptop
(like a used ThinkPad) is cheap, low-power, versatile and most
importantly, can be taken off the boat and NOT STOLEN. Unless you are
building a ship's safe, I would stick with a laptop I could slide into
the nav station in heavy weather. Their hard drives can stand the
movement better as well.

Now, what I would suggest is running remote mouse, keyboard and flat
screen from that laptop: Think this way: Turn on the laptop and stow
it safely in a padded nav station slot. Run a regular keyboard and
mouse to the nav table top. Get an armature with a light 15" LCD flat
screen monitor on it. Interface through SeaTalk with radar,
GPS/chartplotter, etc. Extend the armature with screen into the
companionway when underway, or mount it into the bulkhead (it's a
Naiagar 35 with a bulkhead at the base of the companionway). Put an
infrared receiver into the flat-screen housing. Put a wireless mouse
into your pocket.

Now, while sailing, you can switch between chartplotter, GPS, radar
and Internet by pointing and clicking at the screen that's five feet
in front of you and three times the size of the "integrated" displays
Raytheon, etc. sell. The PC itself is below, nice and dry. The
keyboard is stowed. The mouse is in your pocket. You have a totally
functional outfit, and yet you pull out three cords and you can take
the laptop ashore for safety, etc. You can also move the laptop into
the cabin to do your logs. You can back up to a portable hard drive or
burn "log" CD-ROMs.

Sound good? I have no clue why people buy dedicated $3000 multipurpose
units when a guy like your partner for instance could wire a bunch of
sending units to a circa-2001 $800 used laptop running Windows 2000
(don't use XP for mission-critical!)"

The bonus is that a two-year old laptop is far more likely to have a
serial port and yet will be plenty powerful enough to run all current
nav/charting software.

R.

We had a new Dell 4100 laptop on our one year trip to the Bahamas. The DC
power connector flaked out a couple of times and it took all my engineering
skill to disassemble it and fix it. And the fix didn't last. Someone of
lesser electronics abilities would be really stuck. Then I got home to
discover Dell wants $700 fixed fee to fix a laptop if the warantee ran out.
My suggestion if you really want a PC to work:

Don't buy a Dell. Their "Customer Service" policies are awful.

Buy two cheap older laptops, one as a spare. Back up pretty regularly. Maybe
network them together and move data back and forth to backup each machine.
Or use a CDR.

Keep the laptop in one place, strapped down really well. We saw several take
dives off the nav station.

I like the idea of a desktop with LCD monitor for the low cost and easy
spare availability.

My $0.02

Dave Erickson
Apache 37 "Second Sojourn"
www.djerickson.com for lots of nice ICW and Bahamas photos




"John Nagy" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for advice on laptop computers/configurations that seem to
work for folks. We will be doing some blue water cruising and want to
use it for weatherfax and charting as well as email. Any help
experiences would be appreciated! Also any web sites that deal with the
subject would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Best Regards, John

S/V Lionheart

Dave Erickson wrote:

Buy two cheap older laptops, one as a spare. Back up pretty regularly. ...

That's been my solution for my ham packet stations. Pentium-ones can be
easily found for under $200US (I got one "166" for $35). Batteries are
usually poor or shot but I run them off a $30 inverter anyway. So far
none of the 5 I have have quit (don't go for the door its just me
knocking wood) but if they do I've got my $$$ worth out of them.

73, K3DWW