I guess I'm spoiled, as the sailboat I crew on has a 2000-watt inverter
located well away from any other radios and equipment, with eight 240-volt
AC outlets at convenient locations around the boat. No HF or SSB radio, just
VHF.

It would seem that what you use to power a laptop or PC is dependant on your
total electronics setup and it's a question of "horses for courses".

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"Mark Reichow" wrote in message
om...
"Can't understand why so many boat owners won't invest in an
inverter, it can't be the expense, and these voltage step-up units are
more
expensive than inverters..."

Most of us that are using laptop computers on boats are using them in
conjunction with an HF radio (ham or marine SSB) to receive weather
fax images, and to send a receive e-mail. Most inverters make noise
on at least some of these HF frequencies when converting AC to DC.
Also battery power on sailboats is precious and even the small
inverters are not very efficient. A small power booster like the one
made by the ham radio operator, Sam Ulbing (N4UAU), are very efficient
and quite. Perfect for this application.

Yeah, if I had no HF radio I'd probably just use my little 140 watt
inverter or the ship' 1500 watt. These make no noise on VHF.
However, you want to run a computer for many hours a day, a 2000 watt
inverter is certainly overkill and will take much more from your house
batteries than is necessary to operate a laptop. The little power
booster is both silent AND efficient.