Which Tablet / Notebook / Laptop Will Work ?

[READY2GO]

We are looking for the best solution we can find. Let me explain what we want.

Polaris Office or any other office program.

Looooong battery life.

Fast charging.

Preferably 12 volt charging.

Built in WiFi.

Built in GPS.

[capttman]

I Pad

[threeriversmari]

+1 for the iPad. For being about 500 bucks, they are really reliable and great products. They can take a pretty good beating also before messing up.

Keith

[avb3]

I've decided to go Android.

More developers are trending towards it due to the open design.

[roverhi]

Netbooks They are so cheap you can buy a couple for the price of an Apple product. They also have one of these newfangled inventions called a keyboard. A really nifty invention for inputting stuff. Saw a 11.1 inch one at Costco for under $400. The slightly larger screen size means they can put a slightly larger keyboard which eases typing for us ham fisted types. The netbooks have plenty of computing for navigation, internet, etc. Don't expect to do any digital film editing with speed, however. You'll need to spend close to a boat unit to get the memory and processing to handle that. Personally, doubt that I'll be doing any film editing in this lifetime.

I wanted a 12v charger for mine but found it way cheaper to buy an inexpensive inverter to charge the Netbook and other devices without a DC adapter.

[offline]

Hmm..

Yes Apple costs more but....

+1 for the iPad...

However I would recommend a Macbook Air as well. I routinely get 8+ hours from mine and it's nice having a real computer.

I use the iPad as a second screen

[OErjan]

A netbook would work for what you want and cost ridiculous money, seen them for well under 250 Euro new, I have this EEEPC 900 (running on Debian linux and using XFCE desktop) only thing not on it from your wishlist is GPS, but there are cheap USB alternatives....

[Capt.Don]

I'm experimenting with Nook Color, rooted to boot Android 2.3. Refurbished Nook Color are now selling for $169. Writing Android img files to SD card works and makes the Nook a full Andoid table. Not bad tablet for $169 and 4GB SD card!

[OErjan]

oh, forgot to tell you, EEEPC netbooks use 12V

[spostamento nobile]

Any dual core laptop with 1gig of ram will do. Buy the car charger, plug it into 12vDC cigarette lighter. You really don't need more than that.

[JayCall]

As to battery life or charging, go to www.powerstream.com and you can find a DC-DC converter to suit almost any electronic device. Cost about $20. You can plug laptop/Ipad right into your house power. I have Ipad and laptop and either works fine for me.

[DOCHO]

Get an Asus Transformer. (Android)
Build in GPS, wifi and Bluetooth.
Also included if you wish a keyboard dock.
It runs Polaris office.
Tablet alone has 9 hours endurance and with the extra keyboard 16 hours. (Eat this Apple iPad)
Also you have micro sd card in the Tablet part (Not on the iPad)
In the keyboard dock you have a normal sd and 2 usb ports. (Not on the iPad)
On the usb ports you can hang a external hard drive. I used them with a 2TB LaCie drive.

On my transformer I have at the moment 32GB+32GB+64GB = 128GB of internal storage. And that for a price a lot cheaper than the iPad 2 64GB wifi.

[Bash]

We have a pair of iPad 2s. One for her, one for me. Wireless keyboards for each, and a shared wireless printer for both. Hers tethers to her Blackberry, mine tethers via bluetooth to my Verizon iPhone.

The laptops stay in our offices now. Don't need them anymore.

[READY2GO]

Thanks for all the replies. We do like the Asus transformer with docking station. Hadn't heard of a EEEPC, I will have to google it and see what it is. 12V DC is important to me.

[zeehag]

i live aboard and full time cruise.
i have an acer netbook and a compaq notebook. the compaq is useless as it has linux added to it and wont function any more. the acer is 2 yrs old and failing....use whatever you wish to use.
the adapters for 12v usage of a normal lappy dont last more than 3 months, as i found out with my hewlett packard years ago. fun.
my next one will be either a hp netbook or a dell netbook.
with a netbook i can use a 120 watt invertor successfully with no problems.