Laptop

[claymore]

We have used Maxsea for navigation since about 2005 and have run it on a refurbished Asus travelmate laptop.
Just upgraded it to TimeZero version 4 and the laptop which has seemed to be getting slower (aren't we all) is now taking quite an age and keeps having a little rest. I've defragmented everything I could, got rid of all other programmes and despite keeping it fed and watered, I think it is sat in the Laptop God's waiting room.
If you wander into the excellent Attainable Adventure Cruising website they seem to love Apple products but I'm better with Windows PC's so don't want to switch. I have an antique Ipad which creaks along and makes a decent Kindle.
Looking on the Which? website for Best buys is only serving to confuse me (not difficult).
So my learned bretheren - the key question is which laptop will do the job best and is there an advantage to buying a 'gaming' laptop. (That is 2 questions) It is purely for running the Nav software and sending the odd email when on the boat and in range of WeeFee.
thanks

 

[AngusMcDoon]

Acer Swift 1 is small & light, made of metal, has an excellent bright display, & the longest battery life of budget laptops. It's not particularly quick, but will do what you mentioned. Available with SSD up to 256GB. Fanless, so silent. 12V charger available for £20 aftermarket. Acer is a Taiwanese company.

 

[mjcoon]

... and is there an advantage to buying a 'gaming' laptop. (That is 2 questions)

I think the main attribute of a gaming PC is a powerful video graphics processor (GPU) with the ability to render pretty pictures at high speed. I don't think you need that!

 

[claymore]

I think the main attribute of a gaming PC is a powerful video graphics processor (GPU) with the ability to render pretty pictures at high speed. I don't think you need that!

Thanks for that - I wondered whether one would produce a better display of charts but I take your point.

 

[Stemar]

Milady has had an Acer for about five years now. It still does everything she asks of it, though that isn't much, and she's very happy with it.

A better display of charts would come from a bigger and higher resolution screen. I'd measure the space it will live in aboard and get the biggest that will fit the space and your budget. The downside is that big, high-res screens tend to be hungry critters, so either you get bigger, heavier batteries or less life.

 

[ashtead]

My only advice on laptops would be check what ports they have -some of the slim versions seem to lack enough or indeed standard stuff like might have on current model. I also tend to find some of the new packages are highly annoying compared to the basics on an old ASUs. I guess look for high processor speed as a starter. I have a Dell for work and seems robust enough . I guess size rather depends on whether you have a stand alone monitor screen on board and if you are carrying about or it will live on board ? Can you not run some Nav software on an iPad though if you have one already? Or trade it in to replace if thought too old for newer apps?

 

[srm]

Refurbished Panasonic Toughbook for use on the boat. Got one on Ebay many years ago running win 95. Latest one came from Amazon a couple of years ago. Price was a bit lower than a new, fairly mundane spec, bog standard model and was able to specify hard drive and RAM etc. My assumption is that it will probably outlast a mundane bog standard machine in the damp, salty, dynamic small boat environment.

Only problem with lap top for nav is the power draw if used continuously, even with a 12 volt charger, compared to a chart plotter. Quite acceptable for day sails between shore power at night but noticable if off grid for a few days or months. The higher the spec the heavier the power usage.

 

[AngusMcDoon]

The higher the spec the heavier the power usage.

That's why I think that the Acer Swift 1 is the best laptop around at the moment for a small boat, because bigger/faster/whizzier is not always better.

 

[Adios]

I second a Panasonic Toughbook though not one running anything less than 64bit windows 10 with a solid state drive and 8GB of ram (2 screws to upgrade if you get one with 4gb so don't pay much more for 8gb). If you don't know them there are 2 levels of ruggedisation, fully rugged and business rugged. Fully rugged you can drop in mud and wash it off with a hose. But they are heavy and a bit over the top and I've gone from CF-19s to business rugged these days. Current laptop is a CF-C2, magnesium case with rubber corners, excellent touch screen that flips over to a tablet, splash proof. Ideal for inside a boat, should handle sliding off your chart table a few times. Will definitely run any navigation software. You don't need a new toughbook, panasonic make all the parts to control the quality and the failure rate is practically zero. If it comes with a new or newly wiped SSD it will behave good as new. Just make sure it is finger touch not pen only screen and has an i5 processor ideally around i5 4300 as mine is which was a good bit better than another one I had which the kids eventually destroyed. Need better than military standard rugged for them. £2k when new now going perfectly good condition for a few hundred on ebay because businesses upgrade on a schedule not because it broke and most people think they are better off buying a new chinese made one with a plastic case.

 

[claymore]

Thank you for the responses - clear concise and informative.
I've looked at both the Toughbook and the Acer swift 1 and can see they would both fit the bill.
As Claymore is a motor sailor, I don't worry too much about power consumption - it would be unusual for us to get conditions in Scotland where we have favourable winds for hours on end. We once had a following breeze out to Canna which lasted for 7 hours but invariable we are not blessed with such gifts and the engine goes on.
The Toughbook screen is 12.5 ins which is smaller than the existing laptop and I do tend to clutter the screen a bit with Nav data so would be reluctant to go to a relatively smaller screen but pricewise they really don't cost much for a refurbished model.
Looking at the Acer - perhaps I will.
Thank you once more for taking the time to respond.

 

[Adios]

Toughbook CF 53, 54 and 55 are 14" screens. Worth also noting (most apart from very old) Toughbooks give a running total of hours used in the BIOS. The last one I bought it was just a few hundred. Companies buy them in quantity then some barely get used before the whole lot are sold on and they get the next model. Worth considering the made in Japan quality of a £2000 laptop made for tough environments with barely any use and a new HDD for £400 rather than a made to be as cheap as possible, slim and light as possible, plastic cased box of random components from China for £400. Value wise the choice is obvious. Before discovering Toughbooks I had a Sony Vaio laptop, should be premium i though but it pretty quickly disintegrated for no apparent reason. Toughbooks don't age much you just get a newer model to cope with more demands from new software and sell the old one for a decent price back on ebay.

Another issue is efficiency as others mentioned. They don't have cooling fans and the cases being closed to help seal against water demanded they made them as cool running as possible. IE less energy wasted.

The bulk resellers don't refurbish them really they just wipe the disk and put a new OS on it. They also know the max they can get so you can find better deals with individual sellers. If you go the reseller route and choose the spec a SSD is well worth it for speed and ruggedness, but don't pay £60 for an extra 4GB of ram, can get that for £10 on ebay.

 

[Graham376]

New laptop often not needed. I've stripped out the HDs on 3 laptops and a desktop recently, installed SSDs and upgraded to W10 which can be downloaded for free. Amazing difference in performance for <£50. or a bit more if increasing memory.

 

[Ehecatl]

We have used Maxsea for navigation since about 2005 and have run it on a refurbished Asus travelmate laptop.
Just upgraded it to TimeZero version 4 and the laptop which has seemed to be getting slower (aren't we all) is now taking quite an age and keeps having a little rest. I've defragmented everything I could, got rid of all other programmes and despite keeping it fed and watered, I think it is sat in the Laptop God's waiting room.
If you wander into the excellent Attainable Adventure Cruising website they seem to love Apple products but I'm better with Windows PC's so don't want to switch. I have an antique Ipad which creaks along and makes a decent Kindle.
Looking on the Which? website for Best buys is only serving to confuse me (not difficult).
So my learned bretheren - the key question is which laptop will do the job best and is there an advantage to buying a 'gaming' laptop. (That is 2 questions) It is purely for running the Nav software and sending the odd email when on the boat and in range of WeeFee.
thanks

Get yourself a Solid State Drive and put that in your laptop. It will rejuvenate it and make it much faster (the slow bit is an old and clogged dik drive)
There is software - free - that will take the image of your old drive and put it onto the new - faster - drive

 

[Graham376]

There is software - free - that will take the image of your old drive and put it onto the new - faster - drive

I did W10 install from usb drive and reinstalled programs from discs or downloads then downloaded updates rather than risking cloned image having fragged or unwanted files. Takes longer but theoretically a cleaner installation. W10 free download doesn't need a new license, registers OK on existing W7 one.

 

[Adios]

I did W10 install from usb drive and reinstalled programs from discs or downloads then downloaded updates rather than risking cloned image having fragged or unwanted files. Takes longer but theoretically a cleaner installation.

Totally second that from experience having tried both methods. Nothing like a fresh install, much better than cloning the old drive once its got clogged up. While a SSD will help either way, especially when it comes to fragmentation problems, the issue with your computer slowing down is going to be the software. Simply wiping the current drive and doing a fresh install might be all you need to do rather than bothering getting a new laptop. Install the bare minimum of programs, antivirus first (I find Norton doesn't hog resources too much), a browser like Firefox where you can use addons such as uBlock Origin and Adblocker ultimate to limit the crap you can end up with from surfing the web and the navigation software. If you have an external backup drive (everyone should) at that point make a cloned image of your drive before you start using it (try AOMEI). Then you can occasionally wipe your drive if it starts to slow and install the ready to go clean clone.

 

[Stemar]

I find Norton doesn't hog resources too much

That's changed a bit, then. In the 80s - 486 & Pentium time, a friend with a business building PCs had so many problems with Norton, he used to grumble about wanting to put something in his terms and conditions that said the warranty was invalidated if it was installed

 

[Adios]

That's changed a bit, then. In the 80s - 486 & Pentium time, a friend with a business building PCs had so many problems with Norton, he used to grumble about wanting to put something in his terms and conditions that said the warranty was invalidated if it was installed

I'm running it on a variety of machines and it doesn't give an issues. Was using kaspersky before that so only recent experience of norton

 

[Graham376]

I'm running it on a variety of machines and it doesn't give an issues. Was using kaspersky before that so only recent experience of norton

Older versions of Norton slowed everything down so I stopped using it. Now rely on Defender with W10 and run Malwarebytes Free weekly, just as a check.

 

[Adios]

Older versions of Norton slowed everything down so I stopped using it. Now rely on Defender with W10 and run Malwarebytes Free weekly, just as a check.

Never been sure how much defender does but it sounds risky. Harder to undo damage than to prevent it. Norton has deleted a few files coming in though a few times i've sent them files they flagged and they had them as false positives. My kids computers would be a mess without a specific antivirus program that's for sure. They have a trial i think that could be downloaded to see if its improved.

 

[DJE]

We have used Maxsea for navigation since about 2005 and have run it on a refurbished Asus travelmate laptop.
Just upgraded it to TimeZero version 4 and the laptop which has seemed to be getting slower (aren't we all) is now taking quite an age and keeps having a little rest. I've defragmented everything I could, got rid of all other programmes and despite keeping it fed and watered, I think it is sat in the Laptop God's waiting room.
If you wander into the excellent Attainable Adventure Cruising website they seem to love Apple products but I'm better with Windows PC's so don't want to switch. I have an antique Ipad which creaks along and makes a decent Kindle.
Looking on the Which? website for Best buys is only serving to confuse me (not difficult).
So my learned bretheren - the key question is which laptop will do the job best and is there an advantage to buying a 'gaming' laptop. (That is 2 questions) It is purely for running the Nav software and sending the odd email when on the boat and in range of WeeFee.
thanks

A bit left field perhaps but I have been running Opencpn under Windows 10 on a Pipo X10 for a good few years now. Cheap and works well.

Pipo X10