laptops in car navigation problems

Hi guys.

I have an Acer Extensa 367D which I have been using over the past 2 or so years. I have a Troopie fitted with Celica seats giving me a gap between the seating. Mounted up between the and just behind the seats is a tray onto which I velcros-ed the laptop.

I have had no problems with the hard drive. The CD rom does not apply to me as I have loaded all maps onto the HD.

Now here is MY PROBLEM.

As the vehicle moves over rough or corrugated ground, the screen tends to shake around quite a bit. I have eliminated this annoying thing by bracing the screen to the passengers head rest and that appears to be working but in fact damage had still occurred in that when the screen is not supported it flops around like a dunny door in a wind storm. It has a slop around of almost 2 inches at the top.

I have since made up a couple of braces to stop this but the damage has been done. I pulled the screen cover off to see if I can tighten something up only to find that there are a number of small plastic mouldings under the cover supposed to keep the screen supported.

All these moulding have broken off. I over come the problem to a degree by through drilling the screen cover under the LCD display and putting a though bolt with a securing nut on the outside.

A very bleep poor construction by ACER.........Never buy an Acer Laptop again.

$2,800 for crappy design.

The bottom line, keep in mind also that the screen needs support when open.

Regards

Last time I bought a Toshiba (paid a lot more) for reliability.
Nothing but trouble- back 3 times on warranty and again since.( It did NOT have a rough time and did not go 4WDing!!)
I now have an ACER Travelmate 432 and love it- I think any laptop will have issues with ruggedness unless you pay Thousands and Thousands more dollars!
Moral of the story... treat any laptop with respect- hopefully it will then last.

Hi there.

I think you may have missed the point in my case. I have no problem with the actual positioning the laptop, or it's security concerning it bouncing off the tray, albeit it is in an awkward place, (behind my left shoulder in between the front seats).

The main problem is to secure the lid when it is in an open position.

While it feels nice and firm when open (and still new), it does get quite a bit of shaking about in a forward and backward direction, this is transferred down to the hinge and the casing.

This is where I sustained all my damage, to the extent that the lid now flops about 2-3 inches in the open position. I have managed to eliminate some of the play as stated above, but not a much as I would like to have.

When it was new, I had no slop or play, now, phrrrrrrrrr! :-(

Regards