Mounting a laptop computer in a 4wd

Mine is mounted on a stalk between the front seats above and behind the centre console. I prefer not to have it in front of me. Can see it from both sides. On top of the stalk, I have mounted a piece of ply, glued car carpet to it and I use velcro to attach the laptop. Sits well and the carpet/velcro is solid while giving some vibration protection.

This just has to be an opportunity/market for the budding entrepeneurs out there.Do or Do Not - there is no try !

Greg,

I am in the same boat as you. If anyone has any photos of how they have done it could the email them or direct me to any sites that have examples.Just Do It!

Mounting a laptop is very difficult and time consuming.Ihad partial success with a tray mounted in the central storage bin of a L/C 100 series but there is less room between the seats in a Patrol.

I gave up trying and bought a Ipaq handheld which mounts beautifully on the dash in front of me with velcro. Runs OziExplorer CE.Great screen with little or no reflection.Keep the PC tucked away for occasions when tou need to downlooad other maps etc.

afternoon all, do you mean something like this....http://members.optusnet.com.au/ark000/Navigator%20mobile%20desk.htm

A friend has his laptop mounted in a frame in the centre just behind the front seats. The frame sits between the roof and the top of his 160 litre aluminium aux. fuel tank (which replaces the rear seats)! He has the full set of 1:250 000 topo maps loaded which is connected to the GPS so you can see the moving picture in the rear view mirror. The unit slides out easily so you can use it out of the car. I dont believe he has had any trouble with dust or vibration, althogh the GPS played up on our CSR trip in 2001 (a set of paper maps is a good idea for these remote trips!). This setup is in a Subaru Liberty - of course!Colin - Subaru Forester
- size isn't everything ! -

another site worth a look.... http://www.ram-mount.com/laptopcomp.htm

I had mine sitting on a board on the front passenger seat. I moulded the bottom of the board to sit flush with the contours of the seat (used thin mdf) and covered the top of the board with vinyl. I used some of those plastic clips that hold window flywire screens in place to hold the laptop on the board. Set the laptop on an angle so that you could see the screen just by glancing down at it.

I now have someone sitting in my front passenger seat (yippee!) and need to think of another way. Ideally I'd like to mount the laptop somewhere out of the way (under the seat or infront of the cargo barrier) and use a small 5 or 6 inch LCD screen mounted somewhere on the dash. Any ideas where I can find these screens relativley cheap?

Hi Greg
I am 3/4 of the way through installing the laptop in the GU. As I am using it mainly for moving maps with the gps I have mounted the Laptop in a pocket made for marine ply (overkill but I had some lying around) which is lined with marine carpet with extra foam at the bottom. The pocket has cut outs for the cables and for the fan. The front of the pocket only comes up half way so that the battery does not get hot. The IBM is powered of a 300 watt inverter. The screen is a dropdown LCD screen mounted on the roof.
Will load up photo's next week. (Truckster where are you) for you to look at. I will probably have to send them through to David at ExplorOZ
Raywanderin' in retirement. victor 2010

Greg, the in-dash stereo / TV units have now come down in price and most have aux inputs that you could use with your laptop. The laptop could stay tucked away in a safe place. Other bonus it can be used to play DVD's for those travelling with young ones.Mine is an Alpine system and I plug the video camera into the aux input to view/playback. Marlows do quite a cheap in-dash as well.

Hi Allan.

I have OziExplorer on my laptop and have just wired up my iPAQ 3870 PDA to replace the laptop as it is more convenient for me.

Getting back to your question. If you can run any other program on your laptop and view it on your external monitor screen then I can see no problems that you might experience with the OxiExplorer program running 'moving maps', after all it is nothing ,more that just another program.

My concern was that the external screen (your proposal) was not compatible with a PC/Laptop as the resolution may be different.

Enjoy your 'Moving Map" program, its a ripper!

Regards