Curmudgeon, how visible is the Vaio's
screen in direct sunlight? This is one of the Toughbooks main features along with it's
water and shock resistance.
I left a
hatch open on a bright sunny day while off the
boat for just a little while. My Acer
laptop was under it and we got a downpour. The Acer was
history. Several weeks earlier whilst asleep we got a heavy downpour and the previous
laptop (actually a very good touchscreen tablet) died when the window above it leaked a lot more than the customary few drops. It too was kaput! The Toughbook has breezed through situations a lot worse than these.
I used to strugle with my Navman plotter (small
screen and slow refresh) because I dare not bring the laptops topsides in inclement
weather and in bright sunshine they were useless (screen too hard to read). Now we have no hesitation in being comfortable with our preferred
navigation software (Maxsea) and can check
weather radars online when in range or just do something constructive on the laptop whilst keeping watch (in easy conditions only of course).
As for
power... it does everything I want at the moment which includes the
photo editing and sorting,
music ripping and playing, all my
Internet needs, and all my communication needs. For entertainment we store our movies in AVI format and copy them to a large SD media card which slips into our TV saving the need to use the
DVD drive which has a tendency to overheat. The only thing the old one is a bit slow at is editing and ripping movies but the new one has more
power, and capacity so it should cope with that too. The other power is also very good it chews half the amps that my old tablet chewed and on
batteries I get a full night sail without difficulty saving my house
batteries. We do have two main batteries and a multifunction slot
battery though.
You might be surprised how well an old five year old computer can perform if it is kept clean (malware and dust too) and within the parameters of a suitable OS. I dumped Vista a few days after first installing it and am only now trying Win7 in the new CF-30.
The
desktop P4 I had when I moved aboard our yacht five years ago now is still going strong with the CPU and RAM we gave it away with. It has external HDDs connected to it now but is perfectly functional. I have no doubt that my new CF-30 will be more than capable of performing my standard tasks in five years and it will still function perfectly well. The new machine has a dual
core processor, 4Gb RAM and a 320Gb HDD. I may be a little narrow sighted here but I can't see too many power crunching new capabilities on the horizon for quite a while at least that would be available to us out the back of beyond away from the hoards.
I keep being told how fast the IT industry is moving and the speed with which machines are becoming obsolete but in reality I am doing nothing now apart from the online stuff that I wasn't doing in 2001 when I built my first P4. That computer did rip and edit movies, perform all the office utilities, manage my
music collection, etc. It also played 3D games but that side of the industry has come a long way since. It would certainly not cope with the latest MS Flight simulator but I sail for real not fly simulator or play games, in general for me that is not a problem.
In the mid seventies I was a mainframes programmer and the technology revolution was astronomical until about 2002. Since then we are developing, refining and speeding applications up but there seem to be a lot less really new innovative applications becoming available.
Google seems to me to be the main innovator now but not many of their applications really need high powered machines to
work just a good
internet connection.
I think that the new Toughbooks are good enough to convince me to pay the outrageous
price. So, I can only say they have won this sailor and is wife (who once owned a computer shop) over. I could not envisage a scenario where I would prefer a non rugged laptop instead while we are on the
water full time. When or should I say if I become a dirt lubber again that may change.