Laptop

[Xyacht]

Recommendations for new laptop for our 50’ sailboat please!!

[thomm225]

They are all pretty nice.

How does the size of the boat affect the laptop type though?

One of the best for any size boat would be this Apple Surface Book 3 which can be configured with 32 GB of Ram, but at almost $2700, it costs more than I paid for my boat.

It's still tempting though.

I'm using a Lenovo ThinkPad Laptop with 8GB Ram with a Raspberry pi 4 for chart plotter. The ThinkPad was $240 and the RPi 4 was $75.

The ThinkPad can be used as a Chart Plotter also with a USB GPS Puck attached.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/su...%3aoverviewtab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFnAnmwG5c

[Xyacht]

Thanks for your input

[dougweibel]

Unless you want to look at a "ruggedized" laptop, which I wouldn't recommend as they are usually ruggedized for desert environments versus marine, there is really not a lot of difference in picking a laptop for a boat than for a home or office ashore. Start with the basics for making a choice - Apple vs Windows vs Linux, price range, preferred size, etc. I'd also look for one for which you can get a 'car charger' - i.e. a 12v charger that is not just a small inverter. This is fairly easy if the laptop uses a usb-c port for charging, and makes using the laptop aboard more energy efficient. Screen brightness could be a factor if you plan to use the laptop in the cockpit sometimes.

It is one of those cases of too many good choices, though with current supply chain issues I'd verify whatever you choose is actually in stock before ordering.

[Bill O]

Agree w/Doug above about getting a daylight viewable screen (amount of nits), but it depends in your cockpit shading. Unfortunately the price goes up for the units w/~1000-1600 nits.