Boat Forum / Building / October 2007

On Oct 9, 8:24 am, "te...@terryking.us" <te...@terryking.us> wrote:

110 in the shade, so humid that plastic rots. Get a laptop that meets
military standard 810F at the least. If you are smart get proper paper
charts and toss the computor.

That or have a genset and climate control (AC) below.

Go to a digital chart provider and see how big the charts are , and
you will have a better answer. In general the bigger the better, you
may also consider getting an external hard drive and store nothing but
charts on it.

Joe

I think I would have a solar powered fans, like my kid brother's Audi.
The sunnier it gets the better it works.[and it is needed more] He
says it keeps the car 40 or 50 degrees cooler. You can lock it up
properly without cooking the interior.

Casady

It was less than a hundred bucks for a hard drive the size of a
paperback book, that plugged into the USB port and holds 80 gig.

I wouldn't mind knowing just what it takes.

Casady

I have all the US charts from Florida to Maine, New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, and larger charts of the rest of the US and possessions around the
world. 3,088 files that take 2.2 GB.

Ansley Sawyer
SV Pacem

80-110F, hotter if you don't put up a tarp to keep the plastic
roof in the shade!  I've seen them 130F at the dock with all the
ports open in the hot sun, easily.  That's why most boats the
live here, in Charleston, SC USA, have air conditioning.

The best answer for you is "as large as you can find".  Hard
drives are getting SO cheap!  Recently, one of our local Best Buy
stores was selling a 160GB external USB hard drive that self-
powers right out of the USB port, made by Western Digital in
China for $US72...within the last week!

New laptop drives can be had that hold 250GB, now.  You can never
have enough hard drive space ESPECIALLY as they are now so cheap.

For reference, in the 1980's I paid $US2,499 for a 33 MEGAbyte,
not GIgabyte, hard drive for the old IBM-PCXT. (.033 GB)  That
was the biggest drive available at the time!

You can always leave excess storage blank.....You cannot stretch
small storage into bigger storage.

I currently have a DELL Inspiron 6000 on board that I have used for
the past 2 years. The computer was purchased with a 50 Gig hard disk
as standard equipment. A set of world c-maps takes up 1.33 Gigs.

When at anchor for any extended period or in a marina we use a canopy
over both the foredeck and areas aft of the mast and I would estimate
that temperature inside the boat seldom reach 100 degrees F. about 8
degrees N.

As an aside, nearly all cruising boats that I meet have a laptop
aboard.

Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

On Oct 9, 3:24 am, "te...@terryking.us" <te...@terryking.us> wrote:
...

Worst case, say Kanton in the summer, I've seen high 90's inside the
pilot house.  That isn't normal.  We typically see mid to upper 80's
inside in the summer in the high tropics (eg. Hawaii or New Cal) and
upper 80's to low 90's in summer on the equator.

Transis and C-Map cover the whole world in vector on 2 CDs or one
DVD.

Let me add, just by the way, that I don't think there is any
noticeable difference between MTBF for laptops used on cruising boats
and laptops used on land.  I wonder if you're stressing more than you
have to over all this...

-- Tom.

I write this from my sailboat in Puerto Vallarta, MX, where we have
been all summer and the average temp is mid 90's every day.

My perspective is that every boat down here which has people on it
right now, has air conditioning.  So my current interior temp is 74
degrees.

In December it will cool down into the 70's here, many boats and
people will come who don't have ac, but the temp is still in the 70's.

As someone mentioned above, the hottest time is when you are underway,
running your engine because there is no breeze (most of the time
here).  But most of that heat goes right up the companion way.

Most people here have normal laptops, and they all work fine.  I agree
that unless you are taking yours out into the cockpit where rain/salt/
sun can get to it, you should have no additional issues.

-Mark
http://GoReads.com

On Oct 9, 8:24 am, "te...@terryking.us" <te...@terryking.us> wrote:

My experience on a boat in the tropics is simply that it does not get
any hotter than summer at home without air-conditioning.  Actually, in
most cases, not uncomfortable at all.  As for the computer, any laptop
is more than able to handle it.  Unless you get a laptop manufactured
to military specs (Panasonic Toughbook $$$), figure on replacing it
every few years (but then you'd probably replace it every few years
anyway!)  Keep all your charts and other important programs on disk
and keep a system recovery/backup disk as well.

<snip>

I'm not a live aboard or cruiser.  I do some boat deliveries in the
Northeast and have been as far south as Florida on the water.  I have
all the available NOAA ENC/vector and RNC/raster charts for Eastern
Canada, down the East Coast, around Florida, up the Gulf Coast, and west
to Mobile, AL.  That consists of 3,202 files, 492 folders, and takes up
1.47 GB on my hard drive.

Commercially purchased Electronic charts in proprietary formats are
normally purchased on CD's or DVD's and will vary in size from one maker
to another.  And those are often accompanied by embellishments like
bottom contour images, satellite and aerial photo images, etc., that
will increase the storage requirements.  A good example of a package
like that is MapTech's Chart Navigator Pro which comes on thirteen (yes,
13) DVD's.  I doubt that all the DVD are full to capacity but, if they
were, putting it all on a hard drive (if you can do that) could
theoretically account for up to 50 GB or so of disk space.  But it is
highly unlikely that it needs that much room.

Maybe someone (I don't own it) has it all installed and can tell us how
much space it needs?

Another example of commercial charts is the Garmin BlueChart package.
BlueChart Americas covers the North and South American continents, has
more than 5,000 individual electronic charts in it, and takes up a
little less than 500 MB (.5 GB) installed on a hard drive.

Most new laptops comes with 60 or 80 GB drives and that should satisfy
all the needs of the average boater.

I like to consider upgrading hard drives when they are more than one
half full and I consider using 2/3rd's to 3/4th's of a drive's capacity
to be the maximum or limit to allow space for temporary and working files.

I'm a little anal about having enough hard drive space so I would
probably upgrade any new laptop I purchased to 120 or 160 GB (I have 80
GB in the four year old ThinkPad I am using now and it was upgraded from
40GB to 80 GB when purchased new.  My 80 GB drive is a little over 1/2
full after four years of use but I could clean it up of un-used stuff
and reduce that considerably.

Drives are cheap enough, most new laptops have drives that are easily
removed and replaced by the user.  I'd buy a backup drive for the
conditions you describe, load it with the recovery CD or DVD that comes
with a laptop, and then have it waiting in the wings (stored dry and
water tight of course).

If you have a CD or DVD burner on your laptop there is really no excuse
for not having a backup that could restored to a backup drive fairly
quickly.

My focus on hard drives in this discussion is not to imply that they are
the item that usually fails first on a laptop.  My experience is that
drives are generally very durable and most likely to outlast the
displays, keyboards, touch pads, and the like.

Jack