What to choose

[Aja]

Sheena is off to the US of A shortly for a week or so's work. We have decided that the best way of keeping in touch is by email (for various reasons she can't use her work's laptop.) so we want to buy something that can be used later on the boat. I'm not too bothered about running map software etc on it as I have a chartplotter.

Big decision is do we want a laptop or a netbook.

Only plus for a lappy is that it has a built in cd/dvd drive and the netbooks don't. I'm wavering towards the netbook on counts of size (portability) what it does (email, wordprocesssing, surfing) and basically price.

Is there anything I am not aware of? I would want net connectivity later when we are away - probably a Vodaphone dongle or some such piece of trickery....

Regards
Donald

[Nick]

.
Depends what you want to do.

I've got a netbook which is cracking for keeping in touch and doing the odd bit of emergency website repair if required, but it would not be great to work on for more than an hour or so. I take the netbook away for weekends, but for longer trips I plan to have a Panasonic Toughbook on board as well.

The netbook has a solid state hard drive (4gb partition for XP, 16gb partition for programs, separate 16GB mini-SD card for data storage and an external USB drive for music). Toughbook is an older model also running XP. The main thing is that both are fairly boatproof, although the year we were away we had two IBM Thinkpads and both lasted the year with no mishaps.

[Aja]

Nick
Thanks for coming back. What is the battery life like on the netbook and do you charge it whilst onboard - if so how?

I was thinking buying an 8Gb flash pen or similar for storage or do you recommend the SD card.

Donald

[MrMcP]

I just bought one of these over the xmas break having had a thinkpad previously, and would give it a big thumbs up.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/laptops/r ... -Laptop/p1
It doesn't have an in-built cd/dvd, but the battery last ages (around 8.5hrs on reasonably average settings) and it's got some decent power under the bonnet unlike a lot of the netbooks I looked at. Comes with 64-bit Windows7, so you can use all the RAM you install, and has pretty much all I want for a machine that spends most of it's day in work mode, but also has a decent enough display to play some movies or TV content if I'm on a train.

I use a BT dongle, gives decent internet access when on the move, and as the thing weighs 1.4kg and is pretty compact it's easy to stuff in a spare slot on board.

For charging onboard I have one of those 12v adaptors that covers a whole range of laptops - haven't tried it yet but it's worked with pretty much every other machine I've had on board.

[Nick]

Nick
Thanks for coming back. What is the battery life like on the netbook and do you charge it whilst onboard - if so how?

I was thinking buying an 8Gb flash pen or similar for storage or do you recommend the SD card.

Donald

The ieepc has a built in SD card slot, which is a much neater solution than a pendrive which sticks out. Battery life is probably 4 or 5 hours, depends on what you are doing. At home I use this mini-pc as an MP3 player connected to our stereo.

Some netbooks have a slot that will take a mobile card, eliminating the need for a sticky-out dongle for mobile internet access. (I use a Vodaphone dongle as it is the only one with non-expiring minutes - they expire in nine months instead of the 30 days of other brands).

[Aja]

Ordered a Compaq Mini Note 110c Netbook Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 10.1 TFT, Wifi, Webcam, XP Home yesterday. Seems to do everything needed and will probably buy an extra battery pack. This was bought on the advice of a friend who uses his professionally and also takes it to the boat in Croatia where he says its handy for the odd Dvd etc aboard.

Thanks

Donald