On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:09:43 -0400, Gogarty
wrote:

Which brings to mind another thought. Has anyone but a used ToughBook on eBay?

Not on EBAY but a CF-48 from one of the online used laptop dealers.
It has been my primary boat computer for the last two years and many
thousands of miles. It has survived salt spray, being knocked
around, and one 3 foot drop. I paid less than $400 for it. It has
some battle scars but still works well.

There are any number of used laptop bargains for rugged machines like
the IBM Thinkpads. Typical price for a Pentium III is around $200.
I bought a so called factory reconditioned Thinkpad for my wife at
less than $300. It arrived in brand new factory packaging without a
mark on it and has worked perfectly on the boat for 3 years, still
looking like new. Typically we run the Thinkpad at the lower helm for
receiving Weather FAX and SSB EMAIL; Toughbook at the upper helm as
backup chartplotter and route planner.

I took an old Thinkpad on the 2002 Newport-Bermuda Race using saran
wrap over the keyboard to make it water resistant. We were on a Frers
41 which is a fairly wet boat. It survived the race even after
getting sprayed a few times.