To fishy: Magellan makes a laptop interface cable that connects to the serial port of your computer (the "serial" port is the 9 pin connector that all PC's have. If you do not know what that is, look on the back of your computer for the port that has 9 pins in it)

I will post a picture of it later on.

My general purpose laptop has so far done a good job of riding out the waves. The instantaneous G-loads are not that great in a boat, and the biggest danger (I believe) is that it might slide off it's mount and end up on the floor.

With respect to power, most laptops require about 20 volts at a power load of about 75-100 watts. A solution here is a power inverter which converts 12 volts DC to 100 VAC. 300 watt units can be purchased for about 35 dollars at Wal_Mart.

I also have tide predicting freeware on my laptop and that is kind of handy.

Digital camera buffs can also process their pictures on-board via the PCMCIA slot or USB port.