Flightdeck Laptop

[Anon-x]

I am looking to purchase 100 laptops for use on the flightdeck. Reliability with the screen and keyboard is essential and I would be interested to hear from anyone who can advise on the best laptop manufacturer and wholesaler in Europe. Value for money is also high on my list. My required hardware specification is:

Pentium III 600Mhz 128 Ram
12 GIG HD
Wireless Modem
14.1 tft screen
DVD

[SLF 999]

A lot of this is a matter of taste Sony Vivo are good machines but costly, Toshiba and Compaq both make good machines as do Acer, havent used any others.
Watch out for battery life, but most are at least 1.5hrs when off the mains
If your going for 100 machines I think you would get a reasonable discount maybe 20 - 30% maybe more.
Try the manufacturers direct sales that way your cutting out the middle man.

[criticalmass]

Anon-x,

The three brands of laptop generally held to survive travel are:

IBM
Toshiba
Hewlett-Packard.

All should be capable of providing machines to suit your specifications.

Good luck. Regard any laptop as a 3-year "throwaway" item. If it lasts 3 years then it owes you nothing. Buy accordingly.

[fobotcso]

ASUS, (Hi-Grade) produced the only Laptop that survived the Ziff-Davis drop test a couple of years ago. I bought one with the spec you gave and have been well pleased with the kit but not so pleased with Tech Support. Warranty replacement of dead battery was good.

It's heavy!! They do bulk contract work and will badge them with your own brand name if you require. That'll help security.

They used to do laptops for PC World and may still do.

Don't forget Dell and Sony Vaio.

[str12]

In my professional experience as a Software Consultant I always used a Dell and had no complaints. Most colleagues used them as well as IBM Thinkpads. Didn't see many other types used.

Forget the Sony, its a Mickey Mouse machine IMHO.

You'll want good after sales support so go for a leading brand.

And tell the crew not to turn them on during take-offs and landings

Cheers :)

[PPRuNe Towers]

Anon-X,

I've done a lot of research on this subject and have met up with those who put laptops on flightdecks on a large scale - Southwest, JetBlue Etc. I can also provide you with some useful information regarding JAA issues, charging, document formatting and electronic forms Etc.

Some go for the ruggedised expensive stuff, others standard business systems. All have gained very valuable (and expensive) experience you can gain from.

Feel free to write to me at the Towers and we can arrange a chat over the phone.

[mutt]

Anon-X,

What programs are you thinking of running?

Mutt.

[Anon-x]

Mutt

I want to keep everything simple and just run "Off-the-shelf" programs.

[fobotcso]

Anon-x; I'm sure you're in good hands with PPRT as you can't beat experience but here's a little follow-up that may be useful.

The current (September 2001) edition of PC Magazine in UK has a review of 1 GHz Laptops. The "Best on Test" by far was the
IBM ThinkPad A22p at £2495 ex VAT. But because of the cost they couldn't give it best Value for Money. The Best Value for
Money was the ASUS Hi-Grade Ultinote - similar to the model I mentioned in my earlier post but newer. Worth a read as they have no reservations about it but I can't do you a link to the article yet as they don't put their articles on their Web Site until the next edition of the magazine is published.

If your cockpit laptops are going to be "Mission Critical" I imagine you will want a high spec model and the cost will be justified.

str12; my Sony PCG-CV1E is far from "Mickey Mouse" - whatever that means. Not the rigorous, pragmatic language of a software engineer!

I have the half-size full-featured PC that weighs just 1 kg. For that you get 600 MHz, 10 GB, USB, iLink (four wire Firewire), Memory stick port compatible with the Sony Digital Camera, PCMCIA socket and a 56 K card modem, display out socket, integral digital camera etc. Basic battery life is over one hour in continuous use and 2½ hours intermittent. The larger battery gives 2½ in use. Yes its expensive but completely self-contained.

Two things I would like to be different; I'm not fond of the little stick that controls the cursor because it develops hysteresis after a long period of use and the cursor drifts after the stick is released but it works well enough on the road or in the air. And I wish there was an IR port as there is on the ASUS Hi-Grade to let me use the Motorola Mobile Phone as a modem for E-mail without the need to use the modem card.

On my desk I plug in the external power, USB mouse, 15" monitor, LAN card and I have a full PC on the network with a small keyboard but the feel is good. I can plug in the DV Camera and get straight to work with the supplied editing software.

Oh, and you're not stuck with the half-size resolution on the road with the built-in screen because you can select a normal resolution of, say 1024 by 768, and when you scroll to the visible top or bottom of the screen the the desktop scrolls to reveal the part you couldn't see.

PC Magazine said of the full sized grown-up Sony Vaio PCG-FX209K "The Vaio wasn't available for the main feature but is worth
consideration." Very far from a toy!

[5711N0205W]

Within our business we use Dell Notebook and Desktop Machines, the failure rate is low but any that do have problems the 3 year support package takes care of very quickly.

Support is probably the most important part of the equation for business critical machines.

The Dell Inspiron range offers good specifications.

[pied piper]

BT engineers use a panasonic rugged type (don't know model), it folds into it's own case and the handle is also part of the machine. Looks good

[fobotcso]

The October 2001 edition of PC Magazine is out already so here's the link to the Magazine's review of 1GHz Notebooks that appeared in the September 2001 edition.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/pcmag/labs/2001/09/1ghz-notebooks/

As September has not yet begun, I find this all very disorientating!

[FE Hoppy]

had an old vaio it was very rugged no probs at all with it. Got an advent cheap and thats what it was! spect up but lasted a month before the screen lost pixels the modem stoped working and the on/off button broke.
Just got a vaio pcgfx203 top quality.
not at all mickey mouse.

[What_does_this_button_do?]

There is only one brand of laptop that you will get worldwide support in the event of a failure, and that's Compaq.

We've got 12,500 of them and at most I've only ever seen 3 in the repair bay (usually dropped). Not the cheapest, but if you want cheap you get what you pay for. I could go [virtually] anywhere in the world and get my laptop fixed for free under warrenty. You can't get that with Dell, IBM, Toshiba or HP.

[CrashDive]

As pied piper said above, British Telecom guys do indeed use a ruggedised laptop, e.g. the BT chap who fitted my ADSL connection earlier today had one.

Specifically it was a Panasonic CF27 'Toughbook' (http://www.panasonic.co.uk/nw/products/category.asp?c=NBC). <- Click the link, for more info on that range of laptops (Nb. it would appear that the model he had has since been superseded)

Now, on close inspection, it was built to almost field-of-combat levels of ruggedness which accordingly (obviously) made it a tadge heavy - in spite of being housed inside a Titanium case - but it hosted all the usual ports and connectors.

What was especially neat though was the built-in integrated wireless GSM communications capability - I even saw him use it to remotely (re)configure our phone line.

That said, you could probably do much the same with a dedicated (e.g. on airport) wireless LAN (indeed I've actually done this recently at our airport home base - we've got rid of a 64kb leased line, and replaced it with a 10Mb WLAN - spanning a distance of approx 1.5 miles, with ease ! )

In any event the BT engineer was quite happy his laptops performance, indeed nearly as much as I am with my new ADSL connection !