Laptops

[ETwhat?]

as long as you are able to move stuff across to a pc it really doesnt matter but it willl require more playing about than otherwise, i would go for a cheap PC this time and replace it with a mac book once your working, things like ipads are great but they really need to be part of an integrated solution to get the most out of them and bypass the limitations so its fine in your home or office but not so great in halls or on ship. (i did say i dont know what i would use an ipad for, doesnt mean i dont think they are neat and that i will probably get one at some time)

[alistairuk]

If you get a mac, you won't have any problems - you can print as PDF and then just print the PDF on a PC...

You can get Office for Mac, or use iWorks (it will happily open and save MS word / excel files).

Just get whatever laptop you prefer.

[Faust]

Get a mac.

[size4riggerboots]

Well I've just splashed out on a Samsung Series 9 15".... plus an extra terrabyte of external hard drive. Was a LOT of money, but I'm hoping it'll be worth it, certainly hope it'll last well over 3 years!

[Bulman]

Didbt know if I should splash out because of the likelyhood of damage but I suppose it's rarer than I think?

[Ducki52]

Laptops now are pretty bloody robust, I've known guys take fairly cheap laptops on tour to Afghanistan, spend six months buggering about playing soldiers in the desert and the thing still works when they come home to Blighty.

[size4riggerboots]

Depends on how careful you are I guess, I've been working on this Dell Inspiron 1525 (bought refurbished not new) for years now, it's still ok, if a bit slow, but has to be plugged in to work these days. The one I've just bought has an aluminium shell, as opposed to plastic, and at 1.6kg, it's going to be much easier to lug about!

[Hatchorder]

Whatever you buy, unless it is a specialist ruggedised laptop (they do exist) then they will all suffer if dropped, abused or sat on. Trust me I have never seen a laptop pass the cup of coffee on the keyboard test!

So get a proper bag to carry it in, a rucksack type one is best, with proper padding on the laptop compartment. Secondly you can do a lot to help your battery last longer. If you have a Ni-Mh battery once a month run it down on the battery until windows complains you have low battery. Then shut it down and start it up again and log into the bios and leave it running until it switches itself off. (This bypasses the windows protection for battery state that protects your work). This ensures the battery is completely drained. Now charge it up completely again. If you run it off mains all the time at sea charge your battery up to about 50% and then take it out of the laptop and put it somewhere cool. That way it is not on a slight trickle charge - discharge cycle. It does mean if your power trips out you lose what you are doing though.

Finally don' t drink coffee or tea over the keyboard!

I have 3 Dell Latitudes that are between just under and just over 5 years old, 2 of them have just had new batteries as the old batteries only gave about an hour of battery life. The new batteries are showing over 4 hours battery life. They are business machines that are used everyday and are in and out of docking stations and whilst they may be a bit slow with only Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz processors and 4Gb RAM they still do Office at high speed and have never given me a days trouble. The third one is showing signs of the battery falling off the cliff but that one is slightly older and due to retire!

Buy a reputable make, look after it and the battery and they should last 5 years easily.

[Waddo]

Thanks for the battery tips Hatchorder!

I also own both a laptop and an iPad. iPad review in as few words as possible...it's an absolute dream for social networking, games (for killing time, not serious gaming), e-mail, movies and web browsing. I've even done a fair bit of word processing on it. That said, I haven't even started my cadetship yet but there's no way I could go to sea with just a tablet. A mouse and keyboard are still essential for serious productivity in my opinion. Also, as you guys have already pointed out, USB storage, CD/DVD drives, Windows OS and Office are essential if you're going to be 'compatible' with other people both at college and at sea!

My laptop is an 18 month old Sony Vaio VPCEE3Z0E (mid range specs, triple core processor, 6GB ram, decent graphics card). Great laptop, I don't have a high turnover rate as far as gadgets go, barring breakdown or an accident I can't see why this laptop won't last the duration of my cadetship. In terms of recommendations, if it's running Windows, has the right ports and you are confident it's reasonably future proof then just spend as much or as little as you like, it's hard to buy a bad machine these days. I'll let someone else talk about Macs because I'm definitely not qualified!

Oh, a quick app reccomendation for anyone planning on using an iOS device for TV/movies, 'AVPlayerHD' allows you to watch videos on your device without converting them to Apple's preferred MP4 format, much like the VLC app did before it was pulled from the App Store. The best ?1.99 I've ever spent!

[alistairuk]

Windows OS and Office are essential if you're going to be 'compatible' with other people both at college and at sea!

...

Oh, a quick app reccomendation for anyone planning on using an iOS device for TV/movies, 'AVPlayerHD' allows you to watch videos on your device without converting them to Apple's preferred MP4 format, much like the VLC app did before it was pulled from the App Store. The best ?1.99 I've ever spent!

Not necessarily, you'll find a few at college and increasing number on ship have mac's. I've never had any compatibility problems with my mac - just make sure you know how to save your files in a format you can open on windows and your fine.

Thankfully I got VLC before it was pulled

[Steve]

Trust me I have never seen a laptop pass the cup of coffee on the keyboard test!

I haven't spilled coffee on one, but did slop a load of pasta sauce over a Dell laptop keyboard. Cost about ?10-20 to replace the keyboard. They are designed as a tray to retain a certain amount of liquid and prevent it penetrating into the electronics.

[Waddo]

Ye sorry, scratch that! I intended to say how difficult it might be to work and manage files on a tablet versus a computer (be it PC or Mac). I export files from Pages on iPad in '.doc' format and it works fine.

Me too, although I have found that it struggled with higher quality videos. I have some 1.5GB high res vids that VLC can't cope with so had a look round and invested in AVPlayer, it has wireless file transfer if you're too lazy to find a cable!

[Beef1992]

Only problem with macs is software compatabillity , on my previous vessel all those with macs were unable to use the 3g internet dongles as the software was for Windows only.

Personally Ive got a desktop replacement laptop its heavy at 4kg but has everything.
Dell 174 something
i7
8gb ram
1tb hd
ATi 1g graphics
17inch hd screen

Everything i need a big screen for movies , and i can play some games with my xbox pad when i get bored , it will run all the latest used to hook it up to the crew tv and have fifa and f1 competitions on the tv.

[Bulman]

Yeah I don't mind about the comparability much it was more if it was worth getting a good computer or if they were more likely to break after a year, I'm obviously gonna look after it but didn't wanna splash out if people have had experience of their laptops breaking after a year of sea and college use!

[alistairuk]

Only problem with macs is software compatabillity , on my previous vessel all those with macs were unable to use the 3g internet dongles as the software was for Windows only.

That's not really the mac's problem - thats the idiot user acquiring dongles which didn't have the mac software included (always worth reading the small print on the back of the packaging since most of the cheap ones say you have to download the mac version from there web site) - although in pretty much every case you can download the mac version of the software from the manufacturers web site - which doesn't really help you since you need to be connected to download it :-)

Even though I am a mac user; as a cadet I wouldn't go spending a fortune on a mac - a ?300 acer thing will do you just as well for the duration of your cadetship - unless there is some reason you want one!