which Lap top ?

[Maurice55]

I understand from all the posts mentioning lap tops that for the kind of thing we will need one for, we could do with a very basic old one.
Can you tell me what to look for(and what to avoid !!) on the second hand market?
Any advice much appreciated...M.

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[Guest]

Micro-mart .....

A cheap PC mag available in all good shops ....... thumb through that and you'll be amazed !!

Anything that is better than MMX will do most - I even use an old 486 sx33 to do nav !! in Win 3.11

But for plotting a reasonable Celeron 500 etc. is fine - I know the software merchants like P3 / P4's etc. but I've run demos / all sorts on my Maxdata Cel 550 and Thinkpad 600E PII 350 both and they are well up to it ......

The main thing is the size of hard-drive ........ get the biggest you can. If you want just UK South Coast - then you could get away with like I do ...... Drive Stick 128mB via the USB port for charts and main program on HDD ...... total about 200mB........... but believe me it will be soon that you want to spread the wings and build up your folio ....... then the Gb's roll in. A standard chart area occupies about 300 - 600 Mb ..... basically a CD worth. The higher end Charting programs can take up another CD worth of space .......
Yes you can read from CD's but it slows the program down in reading the CD ......
Hard Drive should be 6 Gb or more - this allows you to also load up your GSM phone to e-mail etc. as well. Memory should be as much as you can get ...... 64 MB OK, 128 MB better. If you have XP - then you need 256 MB minimum anyway !!
OK - the following are overkill - but I like playing with this stuff !!! >
So lets take my Maxdata ..... Celeron 550, 128Mb RAM, 60 Gb HDD, 128 Mb drive USB stick ..... of this about 12 Gb is charting ........
IBM Thinkpad ...... PII 350, 132Mb Ram, 20 Gb HDD ....... of this about 3 Gb is charting



<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I came - cos they said was FREE Guinness !
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[Talbot]

I would recommend between 500MHz and 900 MHz with a combo drive to cut your own CDs, and as large a hardrive as you can get. The advantage of these older machines is that they are cheaper and invariably come with a serial port in addition to USB. The larger the display the better (There are 15" laptop displays). This parallels the capability of the system being sold by http://www.chartwork.com/ to go with their software (well worth a look at their demo).

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[petery]

I chose a Panasonic Toughbook -which has a magnesium case; is 'waterproof' and has the hard drive shock protected in a 'jelly'. Cost me £120 on e-bay ... but a CD unit is extra .

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[Hurleyburly]

Wow, cheap or wot.

Paid £2,200 for my Toughbook - not that happy with it - terrible battery life, very heavy and it gets so hot you could cook your dinner on it (my guess is rubbish components causing lots of resistence).



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[BrendanS]

Interesting. I got slammed a while back for suggesting that laptops available at these sort of prices

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[bernard_foster]

Have just purchased a Packard Bell K5-285. Pentium 4, 2.8Mhz, 512 Ram, 40Gb DVD-RW combo drive and a 15" tft. lovely machine £1199 where ever you buy it

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[qsiv]

I think it's more a case of restricted cooling being available due to dustproof and waterprrof nature - so convection cooling via the case is all that is available, rather than fans.

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[Hurleyburly]

Nah, it's not one of the Gucci models, just waterproof keypad, shockproof and a handle.

The thing has a fan which seems to just guzzle the power. Also it gets so hot on the bottom you just can't have it on your lap.

Bit of a drawback for a laptop.

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[petery]

Many of my clients run businesses on computers that kids
would throw away as being 'not powerful enough' for their
games.

As long as you don't want animated images of sea monsters
popping up on your admiralty charts accompnied by HiFi
sound , IMHO, 5 year old second hand laptops with loads of
dents and scratches on the case will do for most jobs.

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[Metabarca]

I have a scratched, dented IBM Thinkpad with a fair bit of hard disk, but no much in the way of the whizzbangs the latest models have (DVD drives, trillions of colours, that sort of thing). Only cost me euro 250 and at that price I'm not too worried if one day I should drop it. Got it from ebay.

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[jimbouy]

How about a look at Ebay.

e.g.
IBM T/PAD 570 PII 366 Laptop 128mb 6.4 Gb £295. And that was at the top of the search list.

Just remember to to check the sellers feedback and if poss use PayPal.

Also check out www.morgancomputers.co.uk. They specialise in end of line and referbs.

They have lots of well spec'd Toshibas at the moment

They might have a branch near you.


Jim

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[Guest]

Just a note ...... Morgans used to sell Grey imports ...... generally EOL / Reject USA stock - or they used to and I had serious trouble over a Bull Computer years ago .....


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I came - cos they said was FREE Guinness !
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[jimbouy]

Hi Nigel,

I don't know their history but I had a Toshiba 133 pentium laptop from them years back that lasted well. Also have had a few peripherals from them.

Actually i am amazed at how cheap some low spec but new machines are.

I have a Compaq with an AMD somthing or other that cost me £500 +vat last year.

www.cpc.co.uk have a 1.2Gb Celery with 256mB and 20Gb for £475 +vat. incs XP but as is the way these days no serial port.

Email u soon

Jim



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[Guest]

I was one of the unlucky ones !!!!!! As the warranty is invalid and had to be sorted by Morgans themselves .....


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I came - cos they said was FREE Guinness !
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[Guest]

I was one of the unlucky ones !!!!!! As the warranty is invalid and had to be sorted by Morgans themselves .....


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
Bilge Keelers get up further ! I came - cos they said was FREE Guinness !
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[jimbouy]

Possibly,

But mine was bought as a refurb with 3months warentee and no O/S.

In the end it was the battery that gave up the ghost.

Funnily enough I then sold it on Ebay and it was bought by a guy on the IOW who uses that particular model to run some radar training software at a sailing school. So no need for the battery.

The machine CPC are knocking out seems a good deal at the moment if anyone is interested and as at 15.30 it is in stock, which is an achievment for one of cpc's specials.

www.cpc.co.uk item number SB0230105 if anyone's interested.

Jim

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[Maurice55]

Thank you for all this information and advice. I will specialy look out for what I would call the nut roaster (or was it Hurleyburly's Toughbook ??!!!)
Cheers...M.

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