Military Surplus PC / Tablet Chartplotter on eBay

[sundown]

For what it is worth there is a listing on eBay that may be of interest to some members. I can't seem to get the link to post in this message but if you go to eBay and search for item #170030254932 it should come up; the seller has more than the one item in his "other listings".
(His item description is "Rugged Marine/Military Chartplotter GPS Tablet PC")

In my opinion what I see as good points of this unit are
1)Water proof
2)it would seem logical that it is rugged
3) Cheap
4) It is not dependent upon anyone's proprietry charts or software. NOAA charts can be had for virtually free
6) 6 gig will hold a heck of a lot of charts and programs. (My nav program for ALL British Columbia charts and os fits on 3 cd's. All US NOAA charts fit on 6 cd's)

Negatives:
1) there are no disk drives -software will either need to be loaded via usb flash drive, LAN, etc (Not a big problem -just annoying)
2)Monochrome screen
3)Windows 98 Operating system was not the most stable (but it was livable)
4)only 128 meg memory
5)external GPS reciever is not included (you can buy one for $50 on eBay or better yet you can buy Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005, which comes with a reciever, for $60 and use the tablet in your car as well)


It would seem that this is a low power consumption unit as the seller claims the charger only draws 36 watts.

Anyhow I have put my money where my mouth is and bought one (but I have a Bannana box full of computer parts that I must have thought were 'good deals" at one time so there may be a down side that I am not seeing.

[Charlie]

I'm going to jump in and try. There has to be something good that we get out of the military budget. It looks interesting to me. and it is a much bigger screen than I would be able to afford on a chart plotter.

[hglad]

Would be curious to know if it's worth $200.00 +/-? I was thinking it would be a good portable backup.
Howard G

"Life is not a spectator sport," Jackie robinson

[Charlie]

I'll let you know what I think of it when I get it and play with it for awhile.

[sundown]

I received my Tablet PC yesterday. It looks (looked) like it is going to do the job very well. It seems rugged enough that you could smack it against the mast with both hands and it would still live. Unfortunately it has no protection against a little bit of knowledge.
I decided I wanted to see what the 'hidden folders' contained and have managed to screw up the Operating System so I now have a blank screen. Which brings me to more 'good news'. I can highly recommend the eBay seller I bought it from (Chromespider). He not only is going to burn me a CD with the appropriate drivers and programs, but has also offered to do the recovery for me if I will mail the Tablet back to him FREE! I guess that is why the guy has a 100 % satisfaction rating! But I digress:

The tablet manufacturer is WalkAbout computers and is a Hammerhead P233. There is lots of info about the company and the model if one wants to search the web. The tablets that 'Chromespider' is selling have have 6-8 gig hard drives and have been auctioning off quite pricey lately. There are other Hammerheads on eBay but they seem to have 3 gig HDD which still and all should be ample for a navigation computer.
If there is one short comming of these units I would say that it is a docking station needs to be purchased in order to access parallell, serial etc. ports. (There is a link to a source for these port replicators at eBay auction 180013246527). Apparently expansion cards can be installed in the tablet but with two pcmcia slots I am more tempted to go with bluetooth cards and gps recievers to maintain the hermetic seal. (note that the pc card cover may be different depending upon the configuration of the used tablet being bought - mine came with dial-up and ether net cards and I will have to make a minor mod to accomadate the bluetooth card).

[Slrman]

This is an old thread, I know, but I have just bought one of these units, too. While it has yet to arrive, so far the seller has been very responsive and cooperative. Because I live in Brazil, shipping is a concern (UPS and DHL suck here) and Chromespider has been very helpful with that.

sundown, your comments are very reassuring that I've done the right thing. Mostly, I want this as an ebook reader for when traveling by air, bus, or car. It seems this will be excellent for that and is much cheaper than most ebook readers. I've had two of those and both failed amazingly early. The good news is, I got my money back and this is cheaper than either of them. Not only that, but it will also play videos and serve quite well as a back-up PC.

I'd hoped to get the Win XP tablet edition OS, but they couldn't provide that. Fortunately, there is a computer store nearby that can and do it cheaply, too.

To be able to also use it as a chartplotter/GPS is a big plus. If I can get all of the Brazil maps and charts, it will be our constant companion on car trips, too.

[shibbershabber]

any update on whether these are useful or not?