laptops

Keep it out of direct sunlight and it will handle the heat just as well as the computer that runs the engine in your car.

Geoff.

Your question intrigued me and I thought about the times we have taken a laptop and usually it is stowed inside a commercial laptop bag which has a quantity of padding - I assume foam.

My thinking is as long as it is not in direct sunlight I would agree with the above statement about not being a major hassle.

Alternatively - you could get a block of polystyrene and cut it to fit the laptop between the 2 halves - sandwich it - and that should do the trick. We usually have ours sitting down on the floor behind drivers seat in bag with a heap of stuff (clothes - jumpers, hats etc - above it so no sun is hitting it directly.

Regards

Graham

Try and take a spare battery for it as well.

Most laptop batteries do not like getting to warm - even though they do warm up a little anyway - most laptops are designed to be in A/C areas or good ventilation at least.
A battery that might be getting on a bit would have it's life go even faster when in hot conditions. If one of the individual batteries (The pack might have 6-8-10 individual batteries welded together with strips), goes, then the on board battery controler, will start to read incorrect volatages and you might find the laptop thinking the battery is full, when it isn't.

Then again, you probably have an inverter to run the Laptop from your 12volt supply.
Just a tip on that though. Take out the battery when using the mains adaptor. As the charge normally goes into the battery first - with the laptop running from the battery - The Adaptor just keeps the battery full. That's one reason people complain about the lack of battery life - even though they use it on mains most of the time!
Remove the battery when on mains.

Hope that helps.