Most laptops are not sealed nor weather proof, meaning they are designed
for use only in areas of reasonable humidity and will not be subjected
to salt air or water. Don't tell the manufacturer that it failed after
three months of sitting under your bimini. They may refuse to honor the
warranty.

That said, I've queried hundreds of folks I've met cruising who bring
their laptops aboard, almost all have had reasonable performance,
providing they are kept dry, out of spray, wind, sun, etc., but you must
realize that this is not the intended environment for these devices. Do
not expect to get the rated lifetimes out of the devices.

There are a few areas that tend to fail, I include what I hope is useful
information but would like to point out that this is just my opinion,
others may have more useful or more correct conclusions:

LCD Screens: These tend to be very, very sensitive to heat and direct
sunlight. Placing them in cool, dry places will greatly improve their
life. Overheating them will cause the screens to darken.

Electrical Connections: I've found that most hardware within a computer
usually will work for the predicted life of the device, but that what
tends to fail are the connections. Coating them with Dielectric Grease
will help prevent this from occurring.

Disk Drives: The MTBF (mean time between failures) for most disk drives
is about 3.5 years. Disk drives are amazingly rugged devices, given
what they do, but this is still a relatively quick failure rate. I'd
recommend having at least one or more external drives on which you back
up the system, and at least one "still in the box" internal drive and
the complete instruction set for replacing it. If you are really clever
you will get everything you want working perfectly, back up to an
external drive, remove the existing internal disk drive and put it in a
vacuum sealed back with desiccant, and then install another internal
disk drive and reinstall from the external drive. This way when it does
finally fail you have the original with all the data ready to go.

Batteries: As most everyone knows, batteries have a "life" and it will
be shortened by running them down and recharging. If possible, keep the
laptop connected to a power supply so that it's internal battery is
constantly charged. I like to have two laptop batteries, which I
periodically switch, making sure they both stay fully charged.

PCB: The printed circuit boards of laptops are not coated with anything
to prevent oxidation. If you are really comfortable working with
electronics, then you might also want to consider adding a conformal
coating to the boards. This is a kind of paint that you apply to the
boards that creates a waterproof barrier but is non-conductive. It is
used in most military electronics, or other applications intended for
harsh environments. NOTE: I've used it on standard desktops and other
marine appliances BUT I've not tried this with laptops, so I'm
speculating that the results will be similar.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Robb



Shaun Van Poecke wrote:
Im sure heaps of people out there must be carrying their laptops on board
when they are cruising for navigation/internet.... what is the general
consensus on life? Do they suffer a lot from corosion? is anybody opening
up their laptop and sparying the circuitboards with anything?

I have two notebooks that id like to carry permanently on a thunderbird 26,
mainly for navigation use, so they'll be on most of the time and id like
them to last at least a couple of years if possible.... I had the idea of
separating the screen and the motherboard/HDD, encasing most of it in a
waterproof container, nolting the screen to a bulkhead and using an external
keyboard.... a bit over the top?

Is anyone shockproofing their laptop, or just sitting them on a table?

Thanks all
Shaun