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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.<br><br>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.<br><br>Kevin<br>KB3PLX<br><br><br>--Forwarded Message Attachment--<br>From: scott@opentrac.org<br>To: aprssig@lists.tapr.org<br>Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:37:55 -0700<br>Subject: Re: [aprssig] Messaging on the NUVI GPS<br><br><pre>Once you get to a certain level of features, then yeah, you need to <br>start considering commodity hardware.<br> <br>On the other hand, there's something to be said for the KISS principle. <br> My Windows Mobile smart phone is an absolute piece of garbage. If I <br>use the camera, I've got a 50% chance of the phone crashing in the next <br>six hours. The interface is sluggish, with enough of a delay on almost <br>everything (and no feedback) that you're constantly hitting buttons <br>twice because it didn't seem to take. Leave it in the text message <br>screen and it freaks out every hour or so about server certificates. I <br>would not use this device for anything important, and it's barely usable <br>as a phone. (The old unlocked Motorola quad-band GSM phone I use while <br>out of the country - $20 on eBay - is vastly better at just being a phone.)<br> <br>And as for the nuvi, the alternative would be to go with a small touch <br>screen PC, which isn't cheap, and you'd have a hard time getting it to <br>match the nuvi for plain old navigation use.<br> <br>Scott<br>N1VG<br> </pre></body>
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