Laptop housing while using external touchscreen

Get a laptop bag with a shoulder strap and put the strap around your headrest and let the laptop hang down behind the seat your are sitting on. Then all the cables can come around to the touchscreen.

Hi John,

I have setup quite a few of these units in vehicles. In wagons we usually make a small box (timber or Ali) and put it just behind the rear seats. In my old dual cab I bought an Ali brief case that fitted under the passenger seat and had the laptop in this.

Of course you will have to make an entry hole into whatever you put it in for all the leads and some sort of exhaust fan setup. We have used 80mm 12 volt fans for ours (the same as is in the power supplies of a standard PC)

Hope this helps if you need any further info or parts just msg me.

Hi John, what make is your screen, and do you have trouble looking at it when driving around during the day time.

Cheers SA_Patrol

I am interested in the experience of people running laptops as moving map displays while on corrugations etc. I have stuck with a PDA (a bit hard to see sometimes but good enough when approaching an intersection or way point) preloaded with OziExplorer routes, waypoints etc.

It is preferable to keep your head up and navigate I reckon. Wheel tracks are easier to follow than lines on maps. Follow your progress on your paper map and only use the GPS as a back up.

The PDA is a solid state device and provided you have sufficient maps on SD cards and you have a direct connection to a GPS receiver, it is pretty well bullet proof as far as corrugations go. I bet there are plenty of Laptop hard drives that have come to grief due to harsh operating conditions.

The perfect set up in my mind would be one of the new GPS mapping displays from Garmin or Magellan, provided the device can be loaded with good offroad digital maps. You could still use a laptop for trip planning but only when stationary. It would also be good with a wireless internet connection on NextG. That plus a Satphone and you are home and hosed (provided you don't suffer battery failures!)

Kingo

John R (SA) you purchased a touch screen, 'make & model unknown - dodgey cheap arse ebay job, ex hong kong'. So what, your choice, why 'bag it and where you purchased it from' ! Bet plenty of others have made very satisfactory purchases off e-bay that have shipped out of Hong Kong.

John

My laptop is under the drivers seat and it works a charm for me. I have a USB hub on the side of the center console so that I can plug things into. I had to remove the aircon vent under the seat so that I could sit it in there properly

Mine is mounted to the front of my cargo barrier, behind the rear seats.
It's in a docking station, which has a momentary switch connected to the docking station's power switch so I can start/stop it from the driver's seat.

Not sure whether you have enough room between the front seats, but in the Prado, I mounted the laptop on a pedestal - simply attached to it with velcro.

Forgive me for asking a silly question, but if the laptops are closed on behind you, what are you looking at..??? Do you have a monitor slaving / feeding from you PC into the front driver compartment.???

I have been toying with trying to ring up a stand to support a laptop in the front to allow me to use mapping / mobile mapping etc. (Any ideas on this would be appreciated)

However, I am more intrigued if there is a way to use the laptop without having being cumbersome in the front..???

Cheers
Shane