rugged small laptop?
 

IF i decide to take a bloody laptop along, does anyone make a smallish, rugged, vibration resistant laptop pc? with all the wifi nowadays itd be nice to have i guess. didnt i see an add for a panasonic tuffbook or something. do they take the riggors of our travels?

When I go traveling all I need to do is transfer photos from my camera, upload photos, email friends and family and check out HU and ADVrider et. al. and post ride reports.

Cheap with long battery life and solid state storage as opposed to spinning hard drive is what I prefer. Although I currently travel with an 11" Macbook Air since I traded tiling a shower for it. But that is probably overkill for your needs. And if you have a GPS and need to use mapsource a small used atom powered netbook on craigslist.org will probably suit you fine. Something cheap and disposable that you won't mind losing.

If no need for mapsource then I would consider the Nexus 7 for 200 bucks from Google/Asus. Or a used iPad.

Or heck android smart phone or an iphone will get the job done in airplane mode with wifi turned on. Two years ago I was emailing and web surfing with an iPod Touch in Central America. It worked just fine and is fairly cheap.

This is not the first time this has come up. But technology changes by the week and there may be other current better ideas.

Kindest regards,
John Downs

I use a Asus Eeee netbook. Fantastic. Cheap. Seems robust. All the laptop you need on the road. And actually I use mine at home too. Keyboard is slightly smaller but I recently finished writing a book on mine, so you get used it! Only real downside is the screen is small for photo editing, but you can probably live with that unless you are a pro.

If you are worried about vibes get one with a hard drive.

I got mine brand new for £170.

Matt :)

Quite reistant - anything small with ssd type of drive.
Truely rugged - Panasonic toughbook. I`ve been using cf-18 for quite some time now and its THE BEST laptop I ever owned when it comes to how usable it is in outdoor conditions. DOwnsides are size (quite bulky) and weight. But I would never trade it for something else.

Regards
Raf

I would second the comment above. Panasonic toughbooks are built like a tank (and cost about as much):eek3:. I would go for a normal laptop with SSD drive (Dell do one) as long as you don't want it shock / waterproof to Mil Standards. Put it in a well padded case. Of course, if you have £2000 and weight to spare, look at GRID (you can literally drive a truck over them):D.

dell latitude d630 ATG (all terrain grade) pretty handy small enough spilt free keyborad and can handle enormous ammount of stress ;)
Rugged PC Review - your source for rugged computing reviews and specs and take a look at this website

Yes, it's called an Ipad with an external storage. Just needs a good water proof bag and don't run over it. Laptops are redundant unless for some reason you need to create content as well as just use applications.

If you can't justify the cost consider that if it is located face up in your pclear plastic map folder on you tank bag it is also your extra oversize and easy to see at a glance GPS, because the screen is much bigger than any other GPS on the market.
Tablet apps are also usualy easier to use and cheaper than PC programs for Weather forcasting, Translating, Messaging and Photoshopping

thommo

Asus EEE,Acer Aspire One,Dell Mini ..better with SSD.8-32 Gb would be enough,you don't need Tb on the road.

Asus Eee Seashell with 10,1" screen... It is dirt cheap, it's got magnificent battery time , it is robust and it is tiny and lightweight (which is all good for us overlanders). You can probably buy five macs for the price of this one - and can then afford to replace it. But, don't expect to do much heavy editing, and please refrain from installing all sorts of "nice to have, need to have- NO!" type of software... that runs in the background strangling your machine. Also, the screen resolution is quite poor, so expect to scroll more than you are used to.

If you swap the internal drive for a Solid State Drive, you will improve performance susbstantially, increase battery performance even more, and make the computer far more durable as you will have no more moving parts. I would personaly go for a small and cheap SSD and sign up for a Dropbox account for cloud storage and backup. Get a bunch of USB storage sticks (dirt cheap and compact - often given away as advertisement)... use these for backup where you don't have access to wifi, or added storage.

I've never had a computer which has been dropped and tossed arround as much as this one, being thoroughly obused by two kids and two dogs... and my wife. Part of the screen is now broken/black
after my two year old daughter thought it funny jumping on it... it is still ticking.

I would buy it again if I was to take a computer on a trip again. For me, my iPhone covers all my needs...

I'll second, third and fourth the Asus EEEPC range, they're fantastic little machines, cheap to buy and compact to pack. As has been said, instal the minimum you need, avoid programs which run constantly in the background and you'll be just fine.

I've recently installed Android on one of the very early 9" screen solid state drive EEEPC which I picked up for beans on e-bay and it's given it a whole new lease of life. I've got all the basics, plus things like Google Maps & Earth, a simple but effective photo editor in Photoshop for Android loads of space and best of all haven't paid for a single bit of software. Best of all the whole thing cost little more than the price of a round of drinks, and all the software was fee as there's a group of developers who work at porting Android to PC, and release it as open source.

No use if you want to use things like MapSource which need Windows, but for everything else, I'm really really happy.

As above but the Samsung N150 (netbook). Rode with mine in a rucksack on my dirtbike for 4months across North Asia in all weathers and never had a problem. I had a charging umbilical cord from tank bag into my rucksack which worked well enough.
+++++Pros...
-Great battery life
-"fast enough" for most tasks
-Survived knocks and moisture (I fell off into a flooded ditch and the water didn't soak through quickly enough to break the netbook)
-SD slots (backup your docs rather than an SSD for peanuts)
-Mapsource capable
-Ok for typing on
-USB dongles fine
-Wifi in internet cafes and restaurants
-Cheap to buy off ebay
-Can charge other devices at while you use it on mains

-----Cons...
-not good for 'heavy lifting' (video editing, resizing tons of photos quickly)
-watching HD movies (small screen and choppy processing)
-heavier than a 7" tablet
-needs a powersupply with a "brick" on it unless you only take a 12V car one.
-Poor upgrade path to Windows8

Rugged
 

I've been on the road for 3 years now with a very rugged notebook.
Support - Netbooks NP-N310 | Samsung Laptops
Very long battery life(They say 9 hrs but you can count on 6 for shure). I up-graded it to 2 GB RAM in Jordan for $30. It has 250 GB HD that didn't fail nor showing any sign of it. There's even a SIM card slot under the battery so you can buy cheap data plans almost every where else in the world than North America. It's much more fun than any multi-task phones or tablets to my usage. Small and sturdy for $500, a very though friend.
I do carry the cheapest possible phone and put a SIM card in it in every country I end-up.

deleted

there are probably more of us using Asus EEE netbooks (and other similar eqivalents) than any other. Those of the Fruit persuasion use MacBook airs.

All are good.

There is no need for toughened notebooks if you pack properly. Tough books are insanely heavy and have tiny screens. Not to mention, super expensive. A vast pool of empirical evidence from people on this forum going back 5 years and more shows crystal clearly that you do not need special laptops. Regular laptops with regular hard drives do just fine.

Avoid heavy laptops.

MacBook Air or iPad with Touchfire keyboard.

No moving parts. Rugged chassis. Light. Long battery life and an LCD much better protected by the stiff chassis, in the MBA's case.

Oh, and they work. :) ("Windoze, the OS of the damned.")

Net books are dead
 

Sayonara, netbooks: Asus (and the rest) won't make any more in 2013 | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Sadly, net books, which have served me most admirably for the past 4 years on the road, have come to the end of the road. Seems the future is tablets and regular laptops. Net books it seems are too cheap.

Tablets seem to be the future. Apple ones suffer badly here in practicality because of the lack of USB and memory for storing pics. Water and dust resistant ones that take full USB service allowing USB hard drives, memory sticks etc are potentially very useful. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/s...let-z-preview/ That allows for unlimited photo and video storage. Tablets are more expensive than net books and offer less capability. But they do save some weight.

For me, who likes to do Foto and video editing as I go along, I still think a more powerful device running full Foto and video software (which means windows or mac os) is still a must, but for many, a tablet will become the adventure biking tool of choice for he next few years.

Time to stock up now then, unless we all go out and replace our nice, simple, reliable and cheap netbooks with ludicrously expensive Microsoft Windows 8 Surfaces, because how else are we going to plot our routes on Basecamp? Or use the full version of Google Earth? Or a decent photo or video editor?

It strikes me that unless you go for a Windows 8 tablet it's going to be a poor substitute for even a cheap netbook, mind you, I notice Garmin have partnered up to produce an Android phone, so maybe they'll give us Basecamp for Android?

Netbooks are going extinct because there's no money AT ALL, in them.

After the cost of hardware and the Microsoft tax ($75-125) there's not alot left over for profit.

MBA's, on the other hand, are much faster (and can actually edit video beyond just cuts) and are served by Apple's huge volume discounts on hardware . . . so Apple can sell something for a bit more than a Asus/Lenovo/Toshiba and make considerably more on it. Full upgrades to OS X cost $30 at the consumer level. Apple has effectively taken the oxygen away from competitors.

Tablets will be longer-lived than netbooks but the future is in mobile of some sort and a size that is smaller than the original iPad and larger than a current iPhone. It's still cumbersome or worse to edit video on a tablet but photo editing has gotten very good on tablets, Droid or iOS. And the iPad (I'm not an Android fan, to each his own), one could and can load photos on from external memory for over 3 years. Touch typing has been available since day one with either a BT or "cover" keyboard.

I've really wondered why anyone carried anything but either an MBA or a tablet.

"A bit" and "considerably" seem to be one and the same thing ... in the UK an MBA starts at 849 pounds, an eee netbook starts at 179 pounds.

Capitalising on the demise of the netbooks, is the lord of the tax ... Microsoft ... who is about to launch a powerful tablet that runs full windows 8 pro, intel i5 processor (same as MBA), USB3, office, full windows software like photoshop and video editors, full HD resolution screen etc, called the Surface Pro.

Microsoft Surface Pro

Re: rugged small laptop?
 

I think tablets aren't there yet... they're good for alot of stuff but their OS's are still very limited and task specific.

It obviously depends on what you need to do. I could probably get along with a smart phone and wifi now. However, if I was data logging, using map source or editing videos etc, I'd need a net book.

I like a net book when it comes to watching videos, sharing photos etc. The codecs on tablets are leagues behind and want you tied into specific encoded media such as eye tunes. Bleeeeeeerrrcccchhhhh

www.touringted.com

I did just mention that a tablet with full windows 8 OS is about to be released ... Eliminating the software shortfalls of existing tablets. The downside is that it will probably cost 600 quid

After last summer's trip I bought an ACER w500 tablet running W7 to replace my ASUS eee901 (screen broke and repaired, connection to screen broke, hard drive too small, but it did run W-XP and had a solid state HD) for £250 new

I bought the ACER because
*I couldn't get a netbook any more
*It runs Windows, so is compatible with Garmin Mapsource (for me the USP).
*It has a solid state HD

W7 was never designed to run on a touch screen, which is a major PITA.:funmeterno: Hence I always plug in a mouse and 50% of the time a keyboard too.

I'll report back after this summer's Siberian trip on how truely rugged (if at all!) it is.

That would be cool....

But It will probably have one of those irritating touchscreen keyboards though.

And have a 30 min battery life...

And run tablet versions of software.

I reckon the backwards compatibility of Windows 8 will be worse than 7.... Goodbye mapsource, goodbye T4A, goodbye VCL media player etc.

I was working with and testing some of the top of the range tablets for Sony last year and thought about their travelling capabilities. They were running a version of android which 'should' let you do pretty much anything. However, they didn't !

It's the hardware that limits you... They want you to use their download servers for music, movies, games etc. Very much the way Apple ties you to Itunes and encrypts EVERYTHING. :thumbdown:

But hey ! We will see. I'm ready to be happily surprised.



All I want when I'm travelling is:

The ability to store and do minor editing with photos.

To play downloaded movies in my tent on a wet, windy day

To store loads of music that I can listen to when i'm in my tent/room/hostel etc.

To sit off in a quiet corner and write a blog, check emails, play on facebook etc.

To download waypoints, maps with my GPS.



That I can do more than easily on my my £200 10" HP mini Netbook running XP that I bought in 2010.



I'd love to see a tablet that can do all that and have the freedom of older windows.

it exists...:smiliex:
Intel Atom CPU N455 @1.66 GHz
2 GB RAM
320GB HD

Re: rugged small laptop?
 

Its called ???

www.touringted.com

Tablet! (no, seriously, it is- but it's not that easy to find.
Only one downside- 2 hours battery life but then this is to be expected- In life, as with so many things, you cannot have it all- well maybe you can but at a price. As Walter says, there will be better at way more $$$
On screen keyboard with touchscreen OR the little diddy one with a usb micro dongle recharged by the USB.
Running Windows 7 Ultimate which is less of a power glutton than XP

If you do not need all the above and are OK with using web cafes' then I recommend using a gaming USB dongle ( I use a 64gb )
You can have a huge range of free programs loaded under the Portable Apps umbrella plus a whole bunch of other ones you may want on the road. Used along with a smartphone on airplane mode and wifi enabled, it's all I need.
I can edit my images, surf the web, do my emails etc etc on the smart phone. I have no need to watch movies as I prefer to read- all my books are in PDF format and you can get the Adobe Reader for free too on Android and Portable Apps.

This last trip I was surprised at the very high percentage of travellers with MacBook Air, either 11" or 13". If you want to be able to run Mapsource (definite criterion for me) then you need something that will run Windows.

Well I had the best of both worlds, for I had a 13" MBA with Parallels Desktop running with Windows XP under Mac OS to give me access to Mapsource and other Windows apps. Solid state disk drives are robust, solid aluminium casing is ultra robust. The only thing you need with this or any other PC (in addition to a padded case) is a piece of cloth to go between the keyboard and the screen to prevent the constant vibrations from rubbing an image of the keys into the screen.

If you want to be able to hardwire your MBA into a network at an Internet cafe you would also need a LAN to USB cable.

:eek3:MacBook Air - hmmmm Tim carrying a £1000+ laptop on a bike is, for me, anyway, a big nono. I could not afford it or to wreck it / have it stolen.
P.S I do not carry the above kit on the bike, just a usb key and a smartphone. Total weigh= 350 grammes :thumbup1:
As micro sd cards are relatively cheap these days, all data you need can be easily carried and transferred to and from your gps via a smartphone.
My unit holds tracklog of 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks and 4000 POI's which is quite a lot-
Using .csv and/or GPX files adds another huge amount of custom POi's.
The Montana's screen is large enough to do your routing.
Modern tech has enabled me to cut loose from heavy kit like netbooks/laptops on the road and it's one less thing to charge and worry about.
IMHO if you don't need to see movies or maintain a blog instantly, then you can live quite happily without.
Open Wifi is almost everywhere.

I've been using a Lenovo s110 Ideapad,(2g ram/320g drive) dirt cheap and very tough. Light small, great keyboard and good battery life. Price was about $300 with win7 loaded.

I think traveling with an expensive MacBook air would be a liability.

And I agree how you pack the computer is key to survivability.

Rejoice, the NetBook isn't dead after all, it just no longer has Windows. We've all forgotten the ChromeBook.

What's a ChromeBook? As far as I can see it's last year's NetBook but with Google's Chrome OS. Sadly this does nothing to resolve the problems in using Mapsource and throws in the fact that Chrome OS really needs the Web to work. Luckily the internet is already full of How To Install Windows On A Chequebook posts.

I have a Toshiba netbook that I like pretty well.But it does not have a replaceable sound card.When I Skype with my wife,I usually have nearly no sound-need to type everything.She wants me to replace it with something so we can talk and see.Is this Asus EEE decent for Skype? The connections in South America could have added to the problem.But I have the same issue with it here in the states.

SAMSUNG NP300V3A - S02 Notebook.
 

I have been using a 2009 Samsung NP300V3A - S02 Notebook.

Fast, Reliable.
Long Battery life.
400GB - I5 2410M CPU @2.30 Ghz
64 - Bit Operating System
Fits in the tank bag!

Absolutley NO complaints :clap: