[aprssig] Messaging on the NUVI GPS

[Kevin Sherwood]

New touchscreen hardware for small laptops is expensive, but there's a lot of inexpensive old hardware available that still works great.  Panasonic Toughbooks from the Pentium 3 era with daylight-visible touchscreens are in the $2-300 range (CF-M34), and tablet/notebook hybrids with Pentium M processors (CF-18) go for $700-1000.  Given that 99% of what people do will run on even the earlier machines, and it's only really games that demand the latest hardware, these are a cheap option.

They're also great b/c the fully rugged models don't have fans or vents, meaning they emphasize low power use over performance, so 6-7 hours on a battery is normal.  I bought them primarily for sailing, where power is a valuable commodity.  Finally they're light, with the models I have both being around 4.5 pounds.

Kevin
KB3PLX


--Forwarded Message Attachment--
From: scott at opentrac.org
To: aprssig at lists.tapr.org
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:37:55 -0700
Subject: Re: [aprssig] Messaging on the NUVI GPS

Once you get to a certain level of features, then yeah, you need to 
start considering commodity hardware.
 
On the other hand, there's something to be said for the KISS principle. 
  My Windows Mobile smart phone is an absolute piece of garbage.  If I 
use the camera, I've got a 50% chance of the phone crashing in the next 
six hours.  The interface is sluggish, with enough of a delay on almost 
everything (and no feedback) that you're constantly hitting buttons 
twice because it didn't seem to take.  Leave it in the text message 
screen and it freaks out every hour or so about server certificates.  I 
would not use this device for anything important, and it's barely usable 
as a phone.  (The old unlocked Motorola quad-band GSM phone I use while 
out of the country - $20 on eBay - is vastly better at just being a phone.)
 
And as for the nuvi, the alternative would be to go with a small touch 
screen PC, which isn't cheap, and you'd have a hard time getting it to 
match the nuvi for plain old navigation use.
 
Scott
N1VG
 
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