Laptop recommendations for OpenCpn/sailboat?

[Silver_Surfer]

i have a low end lenovo that isn't working, bad screen, and looking to replace. since i want to use it on my boat, and run OpenCpn, which laptop would this forum recommend?
thanks

[fdr14127]

A late model Lenovo purchased off eBay.....works for me. If you have a teenager in the family, a Raspberry Pi is an even better solution, and that is the solution I am going to deploy.

[deltasig]

I wonder what is the connection of teenager and raspberry pi!

[sailnow2011]

Originally Posted by deltasig

I wonder what is the connection of teenager and raspberry pi!

You have to sacrifice a teenager to power the pi.

[barnakiel]

We have an old Eee Asus and it was, still is, very good.

We had a Dell and it was excellent.

We had an Acer twice. C--P

I am writing this from a Toshiba. It is OK.

All models are 10 to 11 inches. All are lowest shelf (max USD 200 per item).

I would buy another Dell and Asus anytime.

NO Acer.

Cheers,
b.

[fdr14127]

Inside joke among computer nerds, only teenagers are adept at defining the technology represented by the Pi.

[Fence Man]

I'm a few months in on a Dell Inspiron 13 7000 series. It's the 2 in 1 fold over touch screen jobber. I can work a couple days from the truck (or boat) on a charge, and with sporadic use, it'll last several days. I'm quite happy with the speed and reliability. Light weight and compact, which is handy for travel. My last trip from the States to the UK, I landed in the seat with no juice in the outlet. My half charge lasted until I was on the train to Stafford. I'd recommend it without hesitation.

[SeaSon]

I use a 300 dollar HP from Walmart. Work's great. Friend just bought a 200 dollar Lenovo with solid state Drive mini unit from best buy. Works great.

[wsbarnard]

If you are willing to run a Linux machine rather than windows (there is OpenCPN for Linux) then you could get a chromebook and install Linux on it. I suggest the chromebook because they are super light, have crazy long battery life, and are really cheap. Unless you need to do some hardcore computing, like solidworks or compiling big programs, then a chromebook will be plenty powerful. It will also boot up really fast, ~10 seconds, because its a solid state drive and Linux has very little background computing compared to windows.

The only word of caution when going down this route is to make sure that you get a chromebook which allows "legacy mode". This is chrome's version of the BIOS. If it doesn't offer legacy mode then you wont be able to put Linux on it.

There are tons of community forums on how to install various flavors of Linux on all the different chromebooks, so you should have no trouble finding an instruction guide to do this.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Anyone have tips on what make/model can be dimmed down really well, so as not to fry your night vision?

[bcn]

Under Windows 10 there is now an option to dim the complete system (red-shift).
Did not test it at night, but at least it will help with the desktop items not covered by OpenCPN.

[Colin A]

I have a Lenovo g50 at home looks like its NLA but specs on the idea pad 310 look similar. So far 2 years in very good, other then an occasional issue with wifi disconnecting and reconnecting (possibly a WIN 10 issue). So far it's held up to my 3 kids far better then the HP's it replaced.

For work I have a Dell Inspiron, heavy but works really well, plus much more rugged then a lot of other similar priced machines. It replaced a Dell Latitude that I had for 5 years on and off boats around the country with little trouble. Only recurring issue were blue tooth which is apparently a common things with Dell and a couple USB ports getting flaky near the end.

[barnakiel]

Many new (maybe old as well but I do not know) laptops use PWM (pulse width modulation) to dim the screens beyond a level.

These are said to give headache to some users. So if a non PWM model exists then one may opt for it - if plenty of nigh time use is in your plans.

Top Laptop PWM Ranking (Rated by negative impact on eyesight)

Cheers,
b.

[SailsTeam]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDmCmmvIA8A

[Silver_Surfer]

Thx for the the ideas. I ended up getting a hp spectre intel i7 its main attribute is the solid state hard drive I don't plan to have submerged so I think it will do well. As for the driving force to upgrade, operating OpenCpn well that's another story. I downloaded the newest version along with the plugins I use- climatology gribs and polars. Added route planing and when I try to add polar opencpn crashes. When I try to edit boat.xml. Crash. ?? I used the previous version and didn't have this issue. I'm wondering if the virus and malware software have to be muted or turned off. I don't get a warning from either program.
Malwarebytes
Kaspersky secure connection and internet security


Any thoughts?