Good outdoor laptop?

S

Sid Post

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Oct 14, 1998
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I just finished a ~2 week trip through our National Parks in northern Arizona and southern Utah. I found a few "hot spots" and did some limited email and internet searches in addition to a few uses for stored information out in the boonies (primitive campsites). I found my laptop did what was required but, just barely. So, now I'm considering what my upgrade options are. This laptop was a $400 model about 2 years ago so, it is reaching the end of it's useful service life for anything beyond basic email and web surfing on the road and this trip is forcing the issue of searching for a replacement for the coming Spring travel season. I should note that I am very happy with the service this Toshiba laptop has given me.

What I found that needs to be improved:
  • Dust on the LCD screen
  • Screen image lost in sunlight
  • Battery life
  • Charging options other then an AC outlet (DC/AC inverter or 12V DC?)

Other issues that are not specific to outdoor use that need to be improved are boot speed (slow hard drive) and general CPU horsepower and I/O thoughput. 2Mb of RAM was good 2 years ago but, next time around I need 64 bit Vista premium with the hard drive encryption so, RAM needs to be at least 4Mb.

What I don't want or need need is the durability, price, and limitations of something along the lines of a Panasonic Toughbook which looks like it could be air dropped to a mountain in a third world country without a problem. However I need something more then a high school or college student budget model laptop.

What brands AND specific models of laptops should I be looking at? What features are important to consider in my next laptop?

TIA,
Sid
 
Dust on screen- carry a little microfiber cloth & just wipe it off.
Image lost in sunlight- may be able to buy a shade for the screen, not sure.
Battery life- This will decrease with the power of your computer & the size of the screen, generally speaking- may be able to buy a larger battery.
Charging options- worst case, you can just pick up a DC/AC converter, then use the standard power brick charger for the laptop.

I'm curious as to how you got a laptop with 2 gb ram (not Mb, *i hope* btw) for $400, though.

If you dont need the durablity, something along the lines of a dell xps would probably take care of you. I have a xps M1210 which renders solidworks CAD files just fine- ought to be adequate for you as well, i'd hope. What are you actually looking to do with it?
 
gruntinhusaybah said:
Panasonic Toughbook
Click to expand...

I'd like to stay under $1500. The only Toughbooks I have seen were all over $2K. Same with the Dell ruggedized units. My hope was to find something in between a full on military/contruction trade toughness laptop and an office or college student model.
 
The Toughbook will do exactly what you want but it is expensive and heavy. Maybe look at an older IBM thinkpad. They are very nice computers and stand up to a lot of abuse.


As to the charging, maybe a solar panel? I am not sure how you are traveling but a solar panel on your backpack would work, that is a moot point if you have a car though. If you do have a car just buy a DC/AC converter. They are cheap and will allow you to run up to 100watts or so out of the cigarette lighter of a car.
 
I’ve got a Lenovo ThinkPad (formally IBM) and its about as rugged as they come if your looking to stay under a budget. Titanium cover, internal role cage, flex proof housing, it even has an accelerometer that will sense when the pc is being dropped and move the read write heads on the hard drive to a protected position almost instantly. On top of that the computer in general is top notch in any computer mag I read its always right behind apple, making them probably the best windows laptops on the market.
 
Thanks for the Lenovo update. It looks like one of those may be just what I'm looking for.
 
Sid Post said:
Thanks for the Lenovo update. It looks like one of those may be just what I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

If I’m honest I’m a bit of a computer geek, well maybe more then a bit…I’ve had 5 laptops (including a macbook) on the past few years and the lenovo has been my favorite.
 
acer 5920g its a powerfull cheap bastard :D
and for outside and whatever, a small cheap machine like an asus eee should do just fine

but i always wanted an alienware....

now, more serious, it really depends what you need it for
you need ram for intensive apps, like photoshop, 3dmax, or for vista big apetite..anyway ram is cheap these days
then, the graphics card....its very important if you like to play...not solitaire, but quake, fear, devil may cry, starcraft...2, you get the idea...
the cpu s...thats another story, as long as it has 2-4 cores, should do you justice for the next ...months
so....what do you plan to use it for, more specific ?
 
'Net sufing, email, and MS Office (lightweight use with no 3,000 page volumes or huge data analysis tasks with Excel) are the main uses. I don't play games but, I would like to be able to view DVD's in a reasonable fashion.

The screen needs to be 14+ inches and usable in sunlight.
 
Sid Post said:
'Net sufing, email, and MS Office (lightweight use with no 3,000 page volumes or huge data analysis tasks with Excel) are the main uses. I don't play games but, I would like to be able to view DVD's in a reasonable fashion.

The screen needs to be 14+ inches and usable in sunlight.
Click to expand...

for that use you dont need 4gb ram, neither a power hungry graphics card, and any new cpu those days its good enough for stuff like that
anyway, dont buy the low end stuff from any company
that said, i have an old HP nc8000, with dual battery, that can run a looooong time, so maybe you want to find something like that if the battery life is your concern
o yes, and the ram speed depends more on the ram timings than quantity
as for the dust on the LCD screen ...you have no choice there
and image in sunlight.. a good graphics card has options to compensate that, being that its helped by the lcd quality
i would recommend alienware..fast fast stuff, you can configure it the way you like it at their site, but their battery life is not really long
so, HP, Dell, Alienware would make good choices, just find a design that you like and be sure its not the lowest budget one they offer
 
even if you dont use the laptop for gaming, a gaming machine will always be able to do things faster than an office oriented one, so...its your choice
 
Make sure you don’t get one with a high gloss screen, go with a matted one instead. That alone is going to cut down on a lot of your outdoor visibility problems.
 
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