Does anyone use their laptops when off road??

I`ve been using as Asus eee for a while & it`s great, but have started doing a lot of off road stuff on a KTM 690 Enduro.

Any thoughts on taking it on the dirty stuff? Any packing solutions out there??


Cheers

Colebatch mentioned protecting the screens properly (he got through 3 of them). The only other bit is harddrives but as you won't be using the laptop as you ride it's usually not an issue at all (paranoids can use SSDs instead).

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I would put a thin piece of SOFT foam between the screen and chassis.

A SSS (solid state drive) is a must which your EEE will probably have already.

Keeping the whole affair in a neoprene case and pack it inbetween your clothes or sleeping bag will further minumise any shock.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Colebatch's Asus EEE screens seemed to suffer as a result of pressure/flexing when packed with other stuff in pannier bags, causing a layer to crack and the liquid to bleed. I took a new screen to him and later Terry joined us with another, but he also brought a leather type slip-on cover. This seemed to give the required amount of rigidity as there were no more problems after that despite us doing the roughest parts therefter The BAM Road - ultimate test of man and machine - ADVrider

Both Colebatch and I carried external harddrives to back everything up in as many places as possible. There were no problems with these.

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Vitim Bridge Clubwww.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=533442
www.sibirskyextreme.com

I use a thin neoprene case and my Thermarest sleep pad ... with a long Velcro strap the Thermarest makes a nice cushy bundle around the laptop. Also have some bubble wrap taped on top of the laptop to help protect the screen.

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I have an Advent 8212 which is now a couple of years old and has done, I think, five trips with considerable offroad sections. I used my older Dell Inspiron 8600 on three or four other trips. I carry a notebook PC primarily for GPS route planning and tracklog storage. I find a neoprene case is the easiest and slimmest and I then store the PC in the pannier on its side, or in a dry bag horizontally.

Corrugated roads are the most likely to cause damage but I rarely encounter long sections of these. The most likely component to fail would be the disk drive and it's important to fully power down the notebook before packing--you don't want it waking from sleep mode in order to write the hibernate image to disk just as you go over some massive bumps.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

My Dell Inspiron 8600 had done over 270,000kms on ALL sorts of road surfaces before dying for other reasons. It always travelled in an ally pannier, vertically, opening side down, in a slim Cordura document case which I lined with solid foam (sleeping mat) panels on each side and a slim strip along the bottom. It also had a sheet of neoprene inside to protect the keyboard from marking the screen.

Then I bought an Asus F6 - let's just say no more on that!

Now I have a Toshiba notebook (Yea!!), which is packed, and travels, the same as the Dell. I always shut the computers down totally before travelling.

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Margaret
"twenty grand and twenty miles don't make you a biker"
www.ridingtoextremes.com

My Acer One Notebook travels in a leather case with another neoprene one over it. Stored on its side or flat in between clothes and has been fine so far.

I was thinking about the Sony Vaio P series.



Built in GPS as well. Keys are actually normal size. 2GB RAM, and all solid state 250GB space, claimed 3.5h battery life, inbuilt webcam. Would love a tough version but Sony isn't interested in outdoor applications.
Should be good in a pelican or similar case though.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

Should be fine. It's lovely going into an Internet cafe, hooking up (disengage desktop LAN cable and plug into the notebook PC), and then having a familiar keyboard and all your applications where you expect them.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

In interest of 'lighter is better' and dropping the laptop all together, has anyone tried the method of carrying a USB stick or SD Card with your home desktop loaded?

I can't recall the software name, but it's secure and leaves no trace of what you did/looked at/logged on an internet cafe computer.

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West Virginia University 2006
Beta Theta Pi - Beta Psi
Ride Report: TAT...and Beyond

Portable Apps, I think, is the name. I've not used it on a USB stick but do use them on a partitioned drive on my EEEPC 1005. It's got a "factory reset" feature for the Windows installation on C: in case something goes weird, so I put Portable Apps on D: and can reset at will without losing anything.

Not tried it on a USB though, but given how cheap they are it'd be a good back up if nothing else.

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asus eeepc 900 is the laptop to go. buy the one with ssd. cheap, reliable and light (app. 900 gr)

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ozhan u.
website under construction

Eee900 had too small a screen for my needs. I went for a Eee1000 (windows xp and hard drive) and still needed more.

Basically every night I was editing photos and typing text, and the smaller the screen, and the lower the resolution, the harder that is.

The biggest advantage of the Eee is the cost and the simplicity of fixing anything that fails on it. Less than 300 quid new, and when I broke screens, they were about 60 quid (now 35 quid) for a new 10 inch screen.

Once I had worked out how the screens were breaking, I didn't break any more. Basically pressure on the BACK of the screen was causing the problem (the plastic shells are not tough enough to absorb anything poking it. After that I just packed the Eee on its side, with an item of clothing behind it. As with all electrical stuff, to protect from falls, and side impacts, falls in rivers etc, the best place for things like laptops is in the back bag.

Two things I was unable to do on the Eee 1000 is (a) edit video and (b) process RAW files. Photo processing via JPEG files was also a little on the slow side. There is a solution ... they have a new model coming any day now, the 1201. It has a much better graphics processing ability (ION graphics chips) so will be able to edit HD video and process RAW files - still for under 400 quid, and 1.3 kgs.

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your are right. it definitely depends on your needs. here is what i can do with my eee 900:

- e-mailing,
- browsing web
- running mapsource
- watching films (on the ferry)
- reading/writing using word, excel, pdf, html editor, etc
- storing pictures, videos (also to a external hdd)
- skype

they are my needs when i am on the road and my main concern is weight and reliabilty also the price. I dont have professional photo or video camera. so i dont need to edit any big raw files or videos. if you want to do this, you need a laptop/netbook with better display card and memory.

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ozhan u.
website under construction