Laptops

[Bulman]

Everyone says the laptops the most important thing to take, so what laptops are people using and had good experience with? I'm looking to buy one soon don't just want one that will break in the first year!

[Hatchorder]

If you want it just for work software go for 14 or 15 inch. To watch films go for 17 inch. Go for a more robust system, something like a dell latitude. Having said that just bought a dell xps702 17 inch with full hd screen, blu ray, i7, twin 750gb hdd, 8gb mem, win7 ultimate, 9 cell battery for ?735 from the dell factory outlet store for our son to help him with his college and sea phases. Been buying dell systems for many years now and never had a problem, especially the latitudes because we use them with docking stations. But others may have other preferences. Just don't buy cheap.

Ian

[YoungMariner]

I use one of these little notebook things, very small. I'm happy with it for what I need. But I don't think its really that good for movies and games

[ETwhat?]

Personally i go for a PC world special deal when i buy a laptop and try to spend around 300-400 on it with the aim that it should last no more than 3 years

before the cadetship i had a notebook but the limited size was a pain for reports and general college life, also no dvd drive so a disadvantage if theres a good movie selection onboard. I replaced it with a 15" hp which is great and even manages a decent battery life. (cheaper dell ones have never really appealed to me and the build quality is shocking in some, although the latitude i had at a pervious job was good, unless it was unplugged) I also wouldnt bother about a big hd, ive bearly 100gb used on this and instead tend to use a portable drive for storing movie and music etc

a fellow cadet got the 17" version of my hp around the same time, hes opinion is its fine for college but a pain for traveling to ship to big and too heavy.

I would advise getting ms office, i know theres alternatives like openoffice but really everyone in the business world has microsoft, and if you have to email files etc then it saves messing about haivng to save things into compatable formats
It kinda is a very personal thing, as long is it switches on has wifi, dvd player, word and can crop pictures it will be adequite

[Ducki52]

Dont forget that tablets are going to be the future, so it may be worth looking at one. It is possible to get an iPad 3 for ?99 then ?29 a month for 15gb data.

[alistairuk]

As much as I love my iPad - a laptop is definitely a must - especially as a cadet where you should be writing quite a lot of reports, your nav / ops workbooks, a diary and of course your college reports / projects. You can also use it to watch films and of course acquire the ships library worth of films from various crew members. (Make sure you have VLC player installed before heading to sea).

If you have a laptop you can do them in your own time / away from the bridge! Since if you're going to be using the ships computers you can expect to constantly get flung off whenever we need to do something.

Also bring a USB stick and it helps if you have some means of producing a readable file! Ie: A PDF or Office 2k file format (since you can guarantee the ships computers will tell you to f-off if you try and put a file on from the latest version of word).

On a different tangent; Not everyone is computer literate - but one way to seriously piss off the officers is to constantly ask them how to use Microsoft Word to do various things!

We had two cadets who both appeared without a laptop, lets just say I never saw one report from either of them while they were onboard.

[ETwhat?]

Actually on that its worth getting to grips with Excel aswell, things like simple formulas/locking certain cells/ formatting/ getting everything to print on one page as not all officers are computer literate either

ive seen some impressive 'male chicken above's that have come from officers being given something really nice and fancy and not having a clue how to use it

As nice as an ipad is it really wont serve you well as a cadet, ive not really worked out what im going to use one for as it doesnt do anything better than anything i already have

[Steve]

Do colleges not have compulsory "how to use a computer and standard MS office software" courses as part of Phase 1 any more?

[danking]

Is it worth me putting Windows on half my mac or does most of the software that you might need/use come in apple friendly versions?
cheers,
Dan.

[ETwhat?]

They didtn for the ETO class but im sure there was something that others did, but even then its rarely about that much stuff certainly not anything compliacted

[ETwhat?]

unless you bring your own printer you will need to be able to open stuff in windows machine to print but that can be done by pdf and email.

[supertramp]

Dont forget that tablets are going to be the future, so it may be worth looking at one. It is possible to get an iPad 3 for ?99 then ?29 a month for 15gb data.

Don't buy one of these, honestly. You should if you're the type that likes to show off gadgets, but in terms of practical use they aren't very good. Can you imagine trying to write a report on one? Or perhaps a simple task like writing an email? It must take ages using a touch screen keyboard and with such a small screen. Not only that, they will be expensive to replace, and from the looks of them it could snap in half in check in luggage.

[ETwhat?]

Don't buy one of these, honestly. You should if you're the type that likes to show off gadgets, but in terms of practical use they aren't very good. Can you imagine trying to write a report on one? Or perhaps a simple task like writing an email? It must take ages using a touch screen keyboard and with such a small screen. Not only that, they will be expensive to replace, and from the looks of them it could snap in half in check in luggage.

Have you actually used one? or is this just a bit of a rant

[Ducki52]

Well I'm not entirely sure about that supertramp, my dear old mum swears by her iPad, and I regularly write and send emails using my smartphone without much difficulty, and I can scan in documents and attach them using the same as well. And tablets are pretty robust as well, given the amount of businesspeople using them day in and day out on many forms of transport without them snapping. And who'd put a ?500 tablet (or ?500 anything) in your check in luggage?

[Bulman]

No point gettibg a mac book then ?