Which laptop for CC?

[Queenofthenight]

The time has come for me to buy a new laptop, and as I'm also planning to live aboard and continuous cruise I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which laptop has the longest battery life and draws the least power? It seems like it's going to be something that's going to be quite important once I'm on a boat. Although I've looked at lots of laptop specs, the battery life quoted and what people seem to achieve out of them seems wildly different...

 

Really looking for something with a screen which is not too small and a CD drive, which I know eats the battery but is pretty essential for me.

 

Many thanks,

 

Nara

Edited December 28, 2011 by Queenofthenight

[Chris Pink]

Depends on your budget really, sky's the limit would be a MacBook air with DVD drive. Truly low power and a proper computer but it will set you back a grand.

 

So budget Queen?

[MtB]

Well my experience is that the bigger the screen, the more power they draw, so a little netbook like the Acer is best for low power. They don't have a CD though.

 

I also bought a laptop for the bote a couple of months ago, another Acer, an Aspire 5551. This one has a stupid wde=format screen (like all new lappies seem to have) which is a pain because the whole lappy is big and heavy but the height of the screen is low. And the dimension that counts in terms of 'screen real estate' for me at least, is the height. Too any windows are simply too tall to fully display without scroll bars destite a nominally 17" screen! And Win7 is no improvement on XP.

 

I'm sorely tempted to by yet another, but 2nd hand on ebay this time in order to get a normal ratio screen and XP.

[Guest]

The time has come for me to buy a new laptop, and as I'm also planning to live aboard and continuous cruise I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which laptop has the longest battery life and draws the least power? It seems like it's going to be something that's going to be quite important once I'm on a boat. Although I've looked at lots of laptop specs, the battery life quoted and what people seem to achieve out of them seems wildly different...

 

Really looking for something with a screen which is not too small and a CD drive, which I know eats the battery but is pretty essential for me.

 

Many thanks,

 

Nara

 

Battery life claims on laptops are about as dodgy as they are on mobile phones -

 

Charged 'on the move' my Acer lasts about 3-4 hours including the power needed to run the dongle, just browsing.

Edited December 28, 2011 by MJG

[Arthur Brown]

If you need a computer then you are really going to have to buy the power it needs. Your computing needs will likely expand so please don't be mean with power. Think of 300w of solar for silent computing, or a big wind generator for stormy computing or just account for a few amp hours from a genset/hookup. There are LOTs of 12V driven laptop power supplies now so you can easily work off the battery.

[matty40s]

If you need a computer then you are really going to have to buy the power it needs. Your computing needs will likely expand so please don't be mean with power. Think of 300w of solar for silent computing, or a big wind generator for stormy computing or just account for a few amp hours from a genset/hookup. There are LOTs of 12V driven laptop power supplies now so you can easily work off the battery.

 

i use a samsung lappy, lovely big screen, and have invested in a couple of batteries off amazon for £30 a shot. I also use the power options on the control panel, using "miser"power, unless the sun is really bright, then sticking it on "high power" as I know my solar will offset my usage.

 

I charge whilst cruising, and charge at work, where possible.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Theo
Remove repeated text

[mickspangle]

I use a samsung nc110 which is a pretty good little netbook with 6-7 hours from a single battery. No cd drive, but have got an external DVD drive that connects via USB for when I need it (which isn't often tbh)

 

In my experience, the faster and more powerful the computer, and the bigger the screen, the more power it consumes, the bigger the power adaptor and the shorter the battery life.

[Circe]

Love my Macbook Air. The DVD drive is a plug in through the USB thingy, so I don't have that plugged in unless I'm using it. Not cheap though (as Chris said) but I get quite a few more years out of a Mac than I do a PC, so it all more-or-less balances out in the end.

 

I've got a PowerGorilla that I plug in to charge when we're cruising. I can plug my laptop into it, and charge both at the same time.

 

Means when we stop I've got 3-4 hours of battery life, plus another 3-4 hours charge afterwards using the gorilla as my power source.

[steelaway]

Hi

 

 

 

My son who knows about computers chose this one for himself as the best buy - even it is Rose (or Blue)

It looked brand new when it arrived and he is convinced they are cheap because they couldn't sell the barmy colours.

 

My link - HP Pavilion

 

 

Alex

Edited December 28, 2011 by steelaway

[Queenofthenight]

Unfortunately a Macbook is a bit out of my price range, I'd love to get one but I've got about £400 ish to spend on something. HP Pavillion and Samsung seem to be quite popular!

[Scooby]

I have a toshiba, and liveaboard, best thing to do if your like me and always on the laptop is buy a double size battery, mine lasts 7 hours and the standard about 2-3 hours so thats almost 10 hours of use without being plugged in, me and the wife bought the same laptop too so i use her battery as well if needed, and the bonus of that is if your running the engine you can charge the spare at the same time...just get your make and model on lappy and battery and get on ebay, cost me about £80-100 but well worth it in the end.

[Guest]

Unfortunately a Macbook is a bit out of my price range, I'd love to get one but I've got about £400 ish to spend on something. HP Pavillion and Samsung seem to be quite popular!

 

Personally (after a bad experience with a very expensive HP desktop) I would say don't touch HP products with a very long barge pole,,,,

Edited December 29, 2011 by MJG

[dor]

I would say don't touch HP products with a very long barge pole,,,,

 

After my Acer desktop died after three years, I asked the guy who manages the hardware at the marina what he recommended for reliability. He said Dell or HP.

 

However the hard drive on my Dell laptop has also just expired! (If anyone has a Dell 1545 hard drive they want to sell I could be interested. Not worth buying a new one as it may have taken out the motherboard as well...)

 

To the OP: We use a Packard Bell Netbook when on the boat. A charge lasts for ages, recharges quickly and, with WIN7, does everything a laptop does.

Edited December 29, 2011 by dor

[PlasticFantastic]

The time has come for me to buy a new laptop, and as I'm also planning to live aboard and continuous cruise I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which laptop has the longest battery life and draws the least power? It seems like it's going to be something that's going to be quite important once I'm on a boat. Although I've looked at lots of laptop specs, the battery life quoted and what people seem to achieve out of them seems wildly different...

 

Really looking for something with a screen which is not too small and a CD drive, which I know eats the battery but is pretty essential for me.

 

Many thanks,

 

Nara

 

Hi Nara

 

You don't say what you intend to use the machine for? If it's just for browsing, writing a few letters and a few eMails I would definitely second the Samsung NC10 with a usb dvd drive (total package for under £250 - I have had one for a year or so and it a great little machine

 

If you are into gaming, or you want to use it as a media centre for movies, photos and music Toshiba Sattelite will probably give you the best bang for your buck - I use one for work running virtual Servers and developing software, it was about £600 last year as a replacement for my previous sattelite which stood 5-6 years of heavy use (and is still running ok, but not up to the job of running a business)

 

I wouldn't ever consider a second hand laptop, and I would recommend John Lewis over any other dealer - prices like for like are competitive, but you can't match the customer service.

 

I couldn't bring myself to recommend Dell or HP - utter rubbish in my recent experience. Bought a Dell for no 1 son which literally fell apart at the end of the warranty period (and the battery life could be measured in seconds counted on one hand!!!!) -have had 2 HPs on client sites recently, solid hardware, but dreadful machines, blue screening and losing wireless networks all the time

Edited December 29, 2011 by PlasticFantastic

[nbtafelberg]

I've got a 2009 Macbook pro which has 4 hours battery life

Plus I use my iPhone 4 for internet

 

Brilliant, very happy with both.

 

Oh and I have an iPad which I'm not sure how long it lasts because I tend to have it charged - iPad is really great for doing everything except programming.

[dor]

[quot]I couldn't bring myself to recommend Dell or HP - utter rubbish in my recent experience. Bought a Dell for no 1 son which literally fell apart at the end of the warranty period (and the battery life could be measured in seconds counted on one hand!!!!) -have had 2 HPs on client sites recently, solid hardware, but dreadful machines, blue screening and losing wireless networks all the time

 

Just goes to show how experiences (and recommendations) differ. My current HP desktop is an absolute flyer - no problems at all with either hardware or software. Same for the marina HPs.

[Laurie Booth]

I won't touch Dell because of their unethical trading.

[DaveP]

Hi Nara

 

You don't say what you intend to use the machine for? If it's just for browsing, writing a few letters and a few eMails I would definitely second the Samsung NC10 with a usb dvd drive (total package for under £250 - I have had one for a year or so and it a great little machine

 

 

If your budget is £400 then you might be able to fit in a cheapish android tablet as well. If you've put in a 3G router to make the mobile broadband signal available as wifi on the boat then it's useful for web browsing and media playback. I use an Archos 10i for this and have a Acer Aspire 1 for situations where proper keyboard input is necessary.

[dmr]

Hello

 

As everyone has said, it all depends on what you want to do with this laptop, but also on how you make your electricity (daily engine run or solar/wind etc).

If you need to have your laptop running all day then it will almost certainly be the single biggest drain on your boat batteries.

If you do an engine run everyday, and only a bit of computing, then charging the laptop from the engine and then running it on its batteries is the way to go.

 

If you do need run from the boat batteries then the little Maplin 12volt to 19volt converters are much better than having to run an inverter..but get the older half round ones (sometimes on special offer) not the new square ones.

The power consumption of laptops is VERY variable, and no manufacturers quote this figure. A small netbook will only take an amp or so from your boat battery, whilst a gaming/photo edititing monster might take as much as 8. That could easily be 100amp-hours in a working day and evening!

In general go for the lowest-tech machine that you can manage with.

If you can get away with a netbook then thats the way to go...have a look at the larger Lenovo netbook, the screen is big enough to use it as a real small computer...though I would not want to work with it all day long.

 

An external CD/DVD drive makes lots of sense, the internal drive is always the first thing to fail anyway (probably even more so on a boat).

If you want to watch DVDs then a dedicated portable DVD player will use much less power than a computer.

If your need is just a bit of web browsing and email then a new fangled Android tablet thing is attractive!

 

Lots of people have said not to use Dell, in fact in the world of computers the simple advice is "Big Name = Bad Computer" (with a few exceptions)

 

........Dave

[smileypete]

The time has come for me to buy a new laptop, and as I'm also planning to live aboard and continuous cruise I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which laptop has the longest battery life and draws the least power? It seems like it's going to be something that's going to be quite important once I'm on a boat. Although I've looked at lots of laptop specs, the battery life quoted and what people seem to achieve out of them seems wildly different...

 

Really looking for something with a screen which is not too small and a CD drive, which I know eats the battery but is pretty essential for me.

Power consumption is largely down to what CPU the laptop has,

 

Generally the ultra slim laptops have less power hungry CPUs, this is due to constraints on heatsink and battery size in a thinner laptop. Of course they cost a lot more. The high performance laptops will generally use more power, even at 'idle' and particularly if they have a separate graphics chip (GPU).

 

That said normal laptops these days aren't too power hungry. LED backlit screens will use less power too. Try and find one that works OK with a standard cheap 12V car laptop adapter, or factor in the cost of the proprietary one.

 

Maybe shortlist a few and ask for comments?

 

cheers,

Pete.

[Smelly]

I'd preach caution on HP boxes; I've bought a lot (well, 6...)over the last 18 months for work and we've seen quite a lot of component failures. It's fair to say they're usually pretty user friendly without too much daft software though.

 

I don't like Acer for all the tatware they come with; they feel cheap and they too saw a high failure rate; 2 of the 4 we bought went back to the vendor within 6 weeks of delivery; the return to base warranty made that a real PITA whereas the HP warranties (certainly the SME warranty anyway) are on site and they were always happy to send me a new board and trust me to install it (that might be silly considering recent alternator woes but hey ho... )

 

I've an Asus eee netbook which is small, inexpensive and efficient. It's 12 volt too It's been quite badly abused over the four years I've been running it and it's still going strong; even to the extent of having soldered a flying lead to the motherboard after a dodgy 12v connection melted inside it's socket. (non standard 12v sockets would be the only gripe I have).

 

Components are easy to replace as well. Although the article I saw that told me Asus were the most long lived PCs might render that otiose...

 

Unlike my Advent the USB ports are live whenever it's plugged in which is handy for charging phones & fake fags.

 

I like my Asus; can you tell?

[Queenofthenight]

At the moment we are using the laptop for pretty much everything. Films, photos, music, internet, email, documents. Not so much gaming although my partner does like that strategy stuff. So, yeah, everything really! Really confused about the 12v. Would that mean getting some kind of inverter and running the laptop off the leisure battery rather than the 240 mains socket? Would that save loads of power? I remember from campervanning that running the inverter to use the laptop absolutely drains it!

[dmr]

Hello

 

An inverter does waste some power in that in needs a bit just to work its own circuits, this varies quite a bit from inverter to inverter, a big "pure sine wave" job can be quite bad. If you are only using the laptop then a little Maplins type 12v to 19v conveter is likely to be more efficient.

 

Another problem with using an inverter is that you need to make sure that all the mobile phone chargers, electric toothbrush chargers etc etc are not plugged in or you waste even more power. I have heard of people with huge inverters leaving the imersion heater on and getting flat batteries in no time at all.

 

Its all a very individual thing but we rely on a "Travel Power" and so only have mains when the engine is running. Everything else is 12volt and the inverter is only turned on for emergencies. This works for us but does mean that we have to adjust our lives to fit in with engine running, which I think is part of the fun of life on a boat.

 

.........Dave

[Bob Blues]

I use a HP Probook for broadcasting and recording as it has a Firewire port. Most of the budget ones don’t have this. Even when used in the stuido Recording is only reports 37 watts. I get 3 hrs from the std battery. however, Ripping a Blue ray disk to Mkv format takes 9 hrs and the laptop is running flat out.

 

before I moved on to a NB I use to build PCs. The one under my desk has an over clocked Extreme processor 8Gb of over clocked memory. a Dual GPU overclocked Graphics card, 4 disks in raid 0 and a SSD disk. The dam thing runs at 700w Idle and if I'm playing a game it's runs at 1300W. So this is not running much

 

Mind you Win 7 boots in 20 Sec from the start to a screen of icons. (it also converts the Blue Ray to Mkv in 3 1/2 hrs Woot!

 

BobB