Ideas for a survival laptop

[similar.squirrel]

Satelite phone. That's it. With that you could get help to pretty much anywhere in the world.

Given the battery life of a laptop, your suggestion is completely impractical.

You called it. A smartphone is capable of doing all of this. Just stick it in some kind of casing and.. I don't know, tape a Swiss Army knife to it or something.

 

[Dr.Panties]

I would venture that you would be better off refocusing- something like a survival handheld personal assistant, with attached survival kit.

You also need a catchy, marketable name..

- Cri-pad ("cri" being short for "crisis") heh heh...
- S.O.S (survival operating system)
- S-Top; S-Pad; S.P.A (survival personal assistant)
- E.P.A (emergency personal assistant)
-E.P.A.K (emergency personal assistant kit)* <I like this one
You get the idea...

Also, try minimising the features to the bare essentials;

- comprehensive maps
- GPS and beacon
- communications
- comprehensive files/guides for survival
- long battery life and easily recharged- solar, or physically.
- extensive Gameboy Advance library...heh heh.

 

[viranimus]

Basically a Toughbook with a GPS module built in, offline repository for Wikipedia (think it comes in at about 50 gb) Extensive load from Project Gutenberg, Ebooks for Medical and engineering. VOIP cluster built in.

But most importantly.... A groundable faraday case. What good is a laptop if its been ruined by EMP burst?

 

[])rStrangelove]

Add a red panic button. Upon hitting it some baloons are inflating, transforming the laptop into a floating device you can hold on to when falling into a river.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Its a nice idea, but the battery life would make this idea an instant fail. Perhaps a Emergency Kindle?

 

[intheweeds]

Ok, so after some nice constructive criticism and suggestions, the survival laptop is currently at some sort of all terrain AK-47 durability kindle with an encyclopedia with knowledge of every survival situation you could get in to including terrain, plants, animals, and instructions on how to do things like make a fire, shelter, find food etc. Detailed maps of the world and every region you could get lost in with some sort of built in compass/GPS. And has some basic survival tools like a knife, lighter, mirror etc.

Well this seems a lot more practical and useful then my initial idea, thanks for all the help guys

Personally: why is this thing still a laptop? Why isn't it survival 'smartphone', which makes a hell of a lot more sense.

I used to go on longish portage canoe trips(i want to again, too). There is no way in hell I am lugging any manner of large electronics with me. A small device though, would be super useful provided it was waterproofed and light. A smartphone could do all the things you describe and is in a small, light easy to carry package.

It should be optimized to use very little battery and divert energy to important things like GPS tracking when its running low on power. Power efficiency will be of paramount importance. Any device will be useless if you have it in the woods for a week and can't plug it in. It should have a very small, low power screen, etc.

It HAS to be light, small and very energy efficient or no one will use it.

EDIT: Ninja, ninja, ninja, all my points! See this is why I shouldn't post so early in the morning.

 

[viranimus]

I think the reason one would choose a laptop over a smartphone is three fold.

1: No comparative limit on Overall capacity: Show me a smartphone with a 1tb storage capacity. Granted you might not NEED it, but there is the logic of having no upward celing on such capcity.

2: Compatibility. Be it from the prospect of having a USB host hub built in to charge dozens of smaller devices ......

(provided you have something such as a portable inverter to keep IT powered )

Spoiler

..... to the prospect of interfacing with other digital files out in the wastelan... Err uhm In an emergency situation. Its logical to have a more compatible operating system that allows you more freedom than something like Debian, IoS, Android Solaris, Symbian, WinCE would be able to provide. Plus there would be file type compatibilities to consider. A smart phone has a degree of logic to it yes, but smart phones also have massive limitations in this area.

3: Performance. Smart phones do OK for themselves. However there is advanced software but their software capacity can be limited by hardware limitations. Consider the lauded Iphone is essentially equivalent at best a 600mhz -1ghz processor, 512 ram, about 32 of graphic video ram. Essentially... its a computer... From the turn of the century. So obviously, unless the software is highly optimized, and extremely specific for the operating system, any software is going to have a rough time, and you can essentially forget about multitasking with it.

Now again.. i get those things MIGHT not be needed, but, then again, dependent on what sort of survival based software you need to run, it might well be VERY relevant.

Anyway... Honestly I still think the most important part would be a groundable Faraday case to protect it from what essentially every other case cant. OH! and a 360 controller just in case you get bored.