DIGITAL WATERS: Using the ACER C720 Chromebook

I am going to be traveling some place warm soon where my gal and I will be on board a forty five foot Catamaran and spending a part of the winter snorkeling, diving and just basically enjoying the warmth. Just like when I am on BIANKA these cruises unleash the creative juices and I wish I had my laptop with me to do some writing. I've been recently looking at the Google Chromebooks which are basically a light laptop that works primarily through the Internet . Not as full featured as a real desktop or laptop computer and does require access to a wifi connection in order to do a lot of things. But, it does come with a basic word processor and have some on board storage for documents in the solid state memory. It’s light and seems good for traveling. At around only two hundred bucks it seemed like a good thing to have even have as a backup to the laptop. So I bought one.

I choose an Acer C720 Chromebook
Both for price and the mostly favorable reviews. So far I am very happy with it and I’m doing everything I usually do with my laptop including writing this blog post. It boots up fast, much faster than the laptop and so far there have been none of those annoying updates and reboots that Bill Gates and company unleash on the digital world from time to time. So far so good though I have only been using it for about an hour.Acer C720 Chromebook

I took the above photo with my cell phone and downloaded it into the Chromebook and it loaded fast and looks as good as my laptop. I also went and checked out Active Captain:

Which is  another site I tend to use a lot when I am on cruising on the boat. Here too access was fast and graphics good. So as long as I have WIFI access which I can create easily with my cell phone acting as a modem. It looks like the Acer C720 Chromebook will work for me both when traveling and when on board BIANKA. I’ll post further remarks as I get to know it better but, the first two hours I’ve been able to make this blog post pretty painlessly. A good sign of things to come.

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

I was hoping to do a post tonight about a recent repair on board BIANKA. But the speed of my internet connection is about as slow as bucking a Hell Gate current. I'm not even using a WIFI connection! Even here on the Isle of Long things can get weird.  All I did was up anchor and move across the harbor so I would not be anchored off a lee shore for the night and my connection speed dropped into the frustration level. Led Zepplin tunes are playing in my head namely Communication Breakdown. 

So I think I'll just go up on deck and look at the stars instead.

WHAT WORKS ON BOARD: Powerstar DC Converter

Before I bought BIANKA I had a 24 foot Bristol. A fine boat of which I still have fond memories cruising with. When I bought BIANKA there were not many things I took from the Bristol. One of the things I did take was this:

A Powerstar DC converter. It plugged into the single 12 volt cigarette lighter jack on board the Bristol and put out 120 volts on it's AC jack. It was a simple device you plugged it in to the 12 volt socket and a red light came on the showed the 120 volt outlet had voltage on it and you plugged in whatever AC device you wanted to use as long as it was rated 200 watts or lower and not too fussy about pure sine waves.

The reason I bought it was to power my new 1986 Toshiba 1100+ laptop.

It had two three and a half inch disk drives used MS-DOS and had NO hard drive and a monochrome LCD screen to boot. And to think it only cost about $1500 dollars in 1986!. Real whiz bang technology at the time. I try not to think to much that my current computer. You know the one with all the USB ports, Hundreds of giga bites hard drive and DVD burner only cost about a third of what I paid for that Toshiba. Of course the Toshiba still works but, like the other seven or eight computers I have bought in my lifetime it is never used today.

But, the DC converter still functions on board BIANKA. It can not be used to power my new laptop because the AC voltage put out by the Powerstar converter is a rather crude approximation of a pure AC sine wave and will fry most modern switching power supplies used in electronic devices. But, the Powerstar will power a Braun hand blender with no problems. So that means yummy Banana pancakes for breakfast as well as other treats from the galley. It has also come in useful many times to power things like the Dremel tool which is used for many projects on board. It's one of the things that really works on board. Even twenty years plus years after I bought it.