my son’s a geek but. . .
January 28th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Sorry for 2 computer related posts in one day but this one has an interesting kayak twist. The first bit of the story is how my son Julian is a computer geek. You see, he builds, repairs, refurbishes and re-sells computers. Well recently he got his hands on a good number of Panisonic Tough Books. These beasts were designed to go where angels fear to tread. Check this out on Youtube.
ToughBooks are used by the miliary, police, rescue services, construction companies and more. They are built to be dropped and kicked around and weather sealed to boot. Oh, and they have cool touch screens as well! Now for a kayaker type like me, I was drooling!
The last couple years as I’ve traveled around posting from paddling events or doing presentations my poor laptop computers have suffered. My pretty little Toshiba now has a big black hole on the screen and a crack from one end to the other. I’ve accidentally thrown wet gear on it. Put it under sandy shoes, and typed while sweat ran down my forehead and landed on the keyboard. It’s been dropped, kicked, stepped on and more. In my world a hard core laptop is a godsend.
So anyway he’s been refurbishing away and I got mine last night. They are licenced with Windows2000. We upgraded mine to XP. They are 600MHz with 128 ram, but modular and expandable. For me it’s a system I can beat up while I travel in the messy environment I live in. I actually took out a modular drive to have a place to store my network card. As a side note, I know he’s got about 6 left that he’s going to sell for $250 with fresh installs and tested out, but as is. Unless of course he tosses them on Ebay.
Posted in 
Tags: 
Hi derrick!
That’s a very tough laptop indeed. Just what we need for outdoor use – only downside is tat the Toughbook is quit voluminous. For myself I am very enthusiast about the new generation of Netbooks. I use an Acer One Netbook for my kayak-travels. With flash memory instead of a hard-disk it’s pretty shock proof and it is compact enough to find a place between the camping gear in the compartments of a seakayak. The Acer is still a fragile piece of kit compared to the Toughbook, but packed in a drybag mine has survived already quit some abuse. And with a price tag around 250 euro’s it’s not the most expensive gear.
greetings,
Hans
For those who just need text RTF and DOC files (and basic excel), there’s the NEC MobilePro 900 available used only at Used Handehelds dot com.
This is no way as advanced as the new ultramobiles. They have 32 megs RAM and 32 megs ROM, expandable with Compact Flash cards which are now really cheap. 7+ hours away from power, and only a bit bigger than a normal letter envelope (ignoring thickness).
Virtual machines. You’re a brave paddler, Derrick!
Hey,
Both good ideas. Although I’d kill the Acer!