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From: Ahmet (no email)
Date: Wed Jun 07 2006 - 15:54:48 EDT
I bought a Gateway CX 2610 Tablet computer from Circuit city a few months ago. I feel it is the best combination for the boat because it is fast enough, it is a TABLET PC, i.e. It will switch and fold over iot's keyboard so I can use it as ascreen only both for chartplotting purposes, playing DVD, watching TV (with a TV card) , or bringing into the cockpit with one of those plastic map covers.
I would say .. definitely go with a Tablet PC. They are a bit more expensive, but much more versatile
Ahmet
www.sailnomad.com
Phil Sherwood <> wrote:
I've been very pleased with my Toshiba Satellite M-35 laptop. It has a 1.7
GHz Centrino processor (not ultimately fast but requires a bit less power),
512 MB RAM, 15.5" screen, 75 GB hard drive (after two years of use I've
occupied less than half that space, even with a few movies, a bunch of
music and charts and photos, and zillions of documents, in addition to the
usual bulky applications). These days I think any but the absolutely
bottom-end laptops will come with enough hard-drive space that that won't
be an issue for you.
It also includes a CD/DVD writer/player and adequate speakers. The video
memory and display are quite capable of playing movies without annoying
pixillations or pauses for buffering. And when you run the audio through
something with a decent amplifier and somewhat bigger speakers, like the
AM/FM/CD system you probably have on your boat, the sound is great!
Battery life is quite good. I got an extended-capacity battery as part of a
promotion going on when I bought the machine and can get four hours or more
of use per charge (I think the regular battery provides about 2.5 hrs of use.)
The downsides are that the machine is somewhat on the heavy side relative
to other laptops, especially with the extended-life battery, and is not the
cheapest computer sold. It's still only 10 or 12 lbs, I think, even with
charger, power conditioner, and other miscellany all jammed into its
carrying case, and is no problem to travel with.
The internal WiFi card is pretty good, but I also use an external antenna,
the Hawking HWU54D, which provides about 6dBi gain, I think, and does a
great job of finding/amplifying WiFi signal. Conveniently, it requires no
external power source and connects via USB.
I'd suggest also looking at Sony laptops -- they also seemed to be a cut
above -- and don't discount Macs. I was in an Apple store the other day
fooling around, and was blown away by a couple of their models. They're a
little more expensive, pound for pound, I think, though (but they sure are
sweet).
Two free chart plotting programs I've come across and like are SeaClear
(http://www.sping.com/seaclear/) and Chart Navigator, from Maptech
(http://www.maptech.com/support/doc.cfm?docid=172&plid=24) . Maptech also
makes lots of charts of US waters available at
http://www.freeboatingcharts.com/, as does the US government at
http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/enc/resource.htm. I don't yet know
where to find downloadable charts for other countries or regions; would
appreciate any pointers anyone has about that, as I'm soon heading out of
the US for points south.
Hope all this helps. Cheers,
Phil
s/v Cynosure
lying Neil Bay WA USA
At 10:43 AM 6/7/2006, you wrote:
>We have decided to get a lap top to carry with us on our charters. We
>would like to use it for naviagation, wireless (wifi) communictaion to
>land line phones and/or computers. In addition we will have with us
>DVDs and CDs we might want to listen to.
>
>Can you recommend any brand of lap top and also sizes; screen as well as
>how many gigabits would be best for all these applications, both memory
>and hard drive. In addition what should we get as far as WIFI and
>increasing the strength of the signal from the lap top. We will not be
>keeping the computer on board when not using the vessel; so it will
>probably be on the boat for about 2 weeks at a time.
>
>We would also be looking into navigation programs, software since some
>of our charters will take us to the Med. and also to the South Pacfic,
>Mexico, as well as the Carib.
>
>Thank you for all of your info, in advance.
>
>Sal
>
>s/y NIRVANA, SO49
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>Yahoo! Groups Links
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