has anyone every played with asus laptop

[scotty]

computer for nav work. they are very lite on power useage, they are small, they have usb and screen outputs as well as other advantages. one nice advantage is they use a solid state hard drive so they are shock proof, they also come with built in wireless so they can be used for the emails home. now for the minus' they have small drives and for the most part they run on linux. although they do have some now that run windows but i dont know it is run in the linux environment. opps for got one thing they supposedably have really bright screens so they may work better in sunlight. just wonder if they will run nav software


they now have some with a 9.8 inch screen

http://www.notebookreview.com/price/...+900+%2D+8%2E9

[Talbot]

There are not many nav programmes that run on linux.

The small puters coming onto the market now only have 8Gb hard drive, but you can now get 16gb sd cards.

[David M]

No laptop is shock proof, just more shock resistant. Asus has plenty of laptops that can run Windows. If your laptop does not you can install Windows on it or partition the drive to dual boot either Linux or Windows.

I don't see any advantage to Linux software for navigation when there is quite a selection of excellent nav software programs available for Windows. I am using Nobeltec on Windows XP which has never crashed on me. If a 16 Gig solid state drive is not large enough then buy an external drive with a USB or fire wire port and store your charts there. Some new laptops even have an eSATA port. Once the charts you are going to use are loaded from the external drive into the laptops memory, the access time is minimal.

[scotty]

well first i am not concerned about linux i would run windows.

the reason i asked is my laptop died yesturday so i am in need of a new one, i was thinking about the posts where people complain about the power draw of laptops and these are less. if i got one of these i could use it for what i use a laptop for ( internet ) plus run it on the boat for nav stuff. i know about external drives and they offer some nice bonas' for this too, ie keep in water tight container till i need to load a chart etc. i also dont like huge laptops, the one that died had a 15 inch screen and was plenty big enough for me, basicly i want a "laptop" not as portable desktop

edit i would also use a 17 inch screen flat tv for most nav stuff, dual funtionality is good

[David M]

Have a look at Lenovo laptops. Check the ratings on them and the quality of customer service. I would stay away from Hewlett-Packards at this time. For minimal power draw, laptops make perfect sense.

[scotty]

i always stay away from hp

i checked out lenovo but they are out of my current price range, i can get toshibas locally for around 550, the one i had that died was a acer which lasted 4 rough years, i like acer

[jaga]

I have an ASUS running windows - makes a great platform for sailmail/airmail. I run my nav programs (and everything else) on a Mac. However, I don't see why you couldn't run one on the ASUS. While it's screen seems small it's no smaller than many plotters. Also, you can get a 16gb sdhc card and load your programs and data on that since windows uses up quite a bit of the internal 'hard drive' card. I actually run the c-map planner program on my Asus that way just fine (my only exception to all nav on the Mac).

Scot

[David M]

For running chart software, I think it is important to get as many pixels as what is reasonable for you. The greater the number of pixels, the more detail you can get on one screen and the more you can see without having to scroll around. Its my opinion that 1280 X 768 is the minimum you would want. I know some plotters have less but then with plotters it seems like you have to scroll around pretty often which gets really old.

[Latitude9.5]

I'd rate most of the asus models above hp, dell, gateway, sony and toshiba. I had two of the hp 9000's and one 6000 and they were total junk, sold them on ebay and bought Macs, best decision I ever made in regards to notebooks There was a time when HP's were good, dells too, but no longer seems to be the case and the HP support/repair is absolutely useless, took me over 8 weeks to get a new battery, under warranty of course.

Just don't confuse asus, with acer

[scotty]

okay i think when the money allows i am going to get an asus. then at least i wont have 4 movies, and 6 books on it that i have watched or read and am too lazy to remove em... like it matters now. i still have a pc to put stuff on sd cards to transfer them back and forth, and i already have a bunch of sd cards for my camera

edit i know acer and asus are not the same

[Delezynski]

Just a quick point, I am running 2 Asus Eee PCs. Both the 701 models (7 inch screen). I have a white one and Jill has a pink one. Both have Windows XP on them so we can do Winlink and Airmail. Both have an 8Gb SD card in them with "Portable apps" on it. That includes Open Office portable. That takes care of most all of the programs we need.

My C drive is a SSDD of 4 Gb. it now has 1.57 Gb free. The 8 Gb SD card has 5.6 Gb free and I have 5 movies on it! The Eee makes a GREAT video players.

Iam thinking about putting Sea-Clear on it.

Greg

[scotty]

well greg i really want to thank you for pipping in. you are definately the last nail in the coffin

[Minggat]

OK, this thread has been an eye opener for me. I have had myself on an electronics spending moratorium, unless it involved the boat, which means I had better not even look. Now I have good justification. I did a quick search and read that Asus has sold out it's global supply of 350,000. Are they easy to find?

[scotty]

they are very easy to find from what i have seen, you might have to get a color your not happy with thou. the asus Eee 1000 is easy to find and has a 10 inch screen, btw the model number means the screen size.... 1000 10 inch, 900 9 inch, 700 7 inch

you can find a 900 for $400 to $540 in stock right now
Asus Lightweight Laptops - Asus Lightweight Laptop

[Delezynski]

Just saw this at Newegg...

ASUS Eee PC 901 XP - Pearl White NoteBook Intel Atom 8.9" Wide SVGA 1GB Memory 12GB HDD Integrated Graphics - Up to 7.8 hr battery life allows for "One Day Computing"

Saw it at: Newegg.com - ASUS Eee PC 901 XP - Pearl White NoteBook Intel Atom 8.9" Wide SVGA 1GB Memory 12GB HDD Integrated Graphics - Laptops / Notebooks

Greg