Laptops on board

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Discus
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Laptops on board

Post by Discus »

This year, we are thinking of having a dedicated boat laptop for general on board stuff and watching the odd DVD and possibly for some Nav in the future. All good, but, do boat laptops have a much shorter lifespan in a salty air environment and what do other folk do to mitigate the salty air issues? Thoughts? :D

Rob :albino:
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Post by Jeff »

I thought they would suffer so initially bought a Dell Vostro 1000 for about £200 brand new. About the cheapest machine available. It's still going strong, but in a farm out-building monitoring dairy cow milk production.

I then bought a Hewlett Packard when we moved aboard permanently and it had to become my sole work computer. That lived aboard from 2009. It got replaced and became my backup computer and it's still aboard Towser as I type. It never had a problem due to salty air. That's coming up to 5 years service, aboard a boat, in a salty environment.

So I think it's simply not a problem. Cheap, middle of the road and now expensive (Mac) all worked flawlessly.

Unsure of your budget for this but I'd highly recommend a Mac with an SSD (instead of HDD) for the job. SSD = no moving parts so if you drop it there's no risk to your data. The Mac also has an average power consumption of about half that of a pretty good energy compliant Windows machine, so is easy on the batteries. It also has a fabulous screen which is so bright it's clearly visible in bright daylight. It also is the first computer screen I've found I can work in front of for hours and hours at a time without developing a headache. It's also thinner and lighter than most other options, so transporting it on and off the boat is much easier. It's also much much faster than Windows so it's switched on for less time, to do the same task anyway.

But! My Mac doesn't have a CD drive. We have an external USB CD drive (cost about £15, works very well).
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Post by Discus »

Interesting!! I always thought that laptops, especially hard drives suffered in a salty atmosphere, but good to see they can cope well. Must admit when I posted the question I had momentarily forgotten you work on computers all the time..........Doh!!!!
I remain unconvinced about Mac's. I still think they are something of a triumph of style over substance and don't offer enough more over a PC to justify the inflated price tag. Karen's work PC has a SSD which results in a fast boot time and good power usage but is a Dell business model so is horrendously expensive to buy. Interestingly, it too does not have a DVD drive and uses an external one. Cheap and cheerful are the watchwords for the boat PC. Have a good Fujitsu lappy for use at home but don't want to lug it up and down to the boat every weekend. Will probably buy an ex corporate Dell as the business machines are built to a much better standard than their domestic cousins. Also, Dell parts are cheap as chips if it breaks as the world and their wife use them. Can also fit an extended battery for about £15!
Next question, we will use the laptop on board for Internet access. I have a phone contract that allows me unlimited data including tethering to multiple devices. I want to use the phone as a wifi hotspot for the laptop but, is this slower than a dongle or a mifi box? Not looking for streaming video speeds just not painfully slow browsing. Have tethered to my old HTC phone before it died but it seemed to drop the hotspot every 20 mins and required resetting which was a pain so didn't really get a good go at it.
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Post by Jeff »

I thought the same about Mac but they offered to let me try one for two weeks, no obligation, no shipping cost either way - and I could do what I wanted with it (as in completely blank it, re-install it, stick Windows on it etc etc.)

The screen alone is such a huge improvement over everything else I've ever seen. The keyboard is lovely. The trackpad just _works_ unlike any other touchscreen/pad device (four finger, three finger, two finger, one finger all always correctly identified and each doing different actions).

I was 99.9% sure it would be going back. I seriously doubt I'll use anything else ever again.

But obviously if you're wanting something to leave on the boat Dell is a good choice as you say.

Internet. We use various ways to get online but recently tethering to my phone set up as a mobile hotspot is the main way. It's also 'unlimited' so I assume you're on Three as they're the only ones offering this to date aren't they? We routinely see data rates in excess of 7MB, which is faster than we've ever experienced, by a factor of 2 or 3, on land. Easily fast enough to stream an HD movie from LoveFilm Instant, or watch a BBC iPlayer repeat.

Recently in the evening my phone seems to penalise us and disconnect us when we have more than once device connected at the same time. There's an app called 'FoxFii' which if set up right, on the right phone, can hide the fact that there's more than one device tethered. I believe in fact it hides the fact that _any_ device is tethered so you could use that and a lesser contract potentially.

We also have a Three MiFi as backup which gives us 15Gb/month for £15/month.
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Post by Discus »

Yes, three is the magic number in this case. I think my old HTC phone was quite old technology and ran Android v2 so hopefully the connection hardware and software have improved since then. With regard to Apple stuff, Karen has an I pad 2 for work and that is a bit on the slow side. It struggles with our home broadband and often just won't bring up a website at all. In contrast, I have a cheap and cheerful 7 inch Hudl from Tesco and it is lightening fast at everything, the only drawback being the front facing camera that is so dim, I look like I am down a coal mine when using Skype. Never thought of streaming anything on board - although I now have the Sky go app on the hudl which will allow us to watch some Sky channels on the move. I think I need to get on board with some more technology. - our house/boat is still full of cd's and dvd's! To cap it all, I am currently watching ER season 1 on VHS! Perhaps there is no hope! :oops:
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Post by Jeff »

VHS, what's that?!?!? :) Blimey!

Have you considered a Chromebook? Might give you all you need if you can do without DVDs... but then DVDs are very handy for when you're stuck somewhere remote without internet... where a Chromebook would be all but useless too.

Forget the Chromebook idea.
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Post by Discus »

Chromebook? Does that take VHS? :D
Still trying to get used to mobile Internet. Doesn't work in our house as we are out in the sticks a bit on the edge of a forest. Any suggestions for a good 3G android phone (good=cheap!)?
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Post by Jeff »

I'm on a Galaxy S3 which seems OK but not that cheap. Screen is awesome though. I hear the Nexus is cheap and good but have no personal experience. Heard similar things from the same person about the HTC but you have one of those.
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Post by Jeff »

PS. Mobile broadband. I never dreamed it could ever be as fast as it is sometimes now. I've done some electronics at the most basic level to communicate wirelessly and absolutely can't get my head around how on earth it's possible to send so much data so quickly, with so much interference out there and omnidirectional antennae (as opposed to two antennae looking directly at each other (satellite dishes). It's not that long ago it used to be impossible to do 7MB/s down a wire!!

But on the other hand it is sometimes very hit and miss even when the signal is apparently strong.

I'm a hard task master though. I routinely expect it to be 'up' for 8 straight hours, five days a week. So when it goes down I notice, even if it's just for a moment.
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Post by Discus »

Jeff wrote:I'm a hard task master though. I routinely expect it to be 'up' for 8 straight hours, five days a week. So when it goes down I notice, even if it's just for a moment.
Blimey!!! Poor Rose! You must be wearing her out!!!!! :wink:
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Post by Jeff »

No comment!!
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Post by Discus »

Probably for the best! :bounce:
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Post by FSDSMAN »

not sure on other peoples qualifications or what they do for a job but I am self employed and work on servers, workstations, laptops and also build them. I am a CompTia engineer, MCSE, Intel channel partner but I must point out that screen resolution and display are not down to the operating system (windows or Mac OS) but simply hardware. Mac's use the same PC hardware now as any Intel based system but just charge you more for it. It is down to what operating system you feel happy with and works for you but the bits under the hood will almost be the same. You have to decide if you want touch screen functionality and such and a windows machine multi tasks quicker than a mac. Go to a superstore and check out how you feel with Windows 8.1 against a Mac. Then it is just price. I work on MAC,s PC,s and some junk you wont have heard of but I know my choice - try out the options in a store.
I would never ever purchase a bell though (did I spell that wrong) but will offer advice if required.
One other point - I do not believe in relying on one bit of kit to do all tasks. I purchased a new laptop to work on the boat (what I am using now) but also a good but very reduce in price car media centre to host my on board entertainment vial a 27 in TV which also acts as a repeater for the Garmin GPS plotter with the wireless remote. If my laptop does go tits up then I do not loose all other functions and with Windows 8.1 saving to the "cloud" is in built as well as your profile so if you have to work else where - log on - down load and away you go.
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Post by Jeff »

The software makes a considerable difference to the power consumption though don't forget. And at the moment, if you want a screen like mine you HAVE to buy a Mac. It's 2880 pixels across - on a 15" screen. It's _awesome_ !!

My preference would be Linux running on Mac hardware I think. But I _need_ Windows on the same machine, running at the same time (VM could do it I'm sure with effort but Parallels makes it so easy) and 'Wine' doesn't cut it.

PS. I used to own and run a computer building, selling and fixing retail outlet that also developed electronic hardware and software for the transport industry. We developed a multi client, completely automatic, 'WiFi' network from the ground up (literally designed the circuitboards and everything), for trucks (logging and offloading telematics), in 1997. Should have patented the idea! :) Subsequently I got into software then more specifically web development which is mostly what I do now, along with some Delphi code development for a Windows application.
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Post by Discus »

Well I can switch a computer on and off! Beat that! :lol:
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