Did you ever try that laptop in the plane again?                        but was just curious you hard drive failure was an isolated incident. 

Hi Rusty;
        Yes I did try it again. This time it didn't even make it to altitude. The first time was a more leisurely climb rate with 2 on board (maybe ~1000'/min) and it crashed (blue screen) at 10'300. we descended to below 10K and rebooted then slowly climbed again and at exactly 10,300' it crashed again. Reboot and again at exactly 10,300', blue screen again, but then it wouldn't reboot.

        After reformatting I tried again, but this time I was single pilot and was climbing out at ~2000'/min. I had only climbed ~3000' when I noticed that the screen was already blue. I never did try this one again as I just use my old Toshiba which has never given me any problem at any altitude or ROC. Except that it has a shitty screen, whereas my Sony has a great screen.

        The FlightMap program is great and it also allows me to play MP3's  by plugging the intercom into the PC, but it is becoming a bit of a pain in the ass, so I'm beginning to questions it's value. I have a dedicated slot for the laptop (slideout drawer on pax side), so it's not really in the way, so I'm considering a remote VGA LCD touchscreen made for autos, mounted in the pax side panel and tilted towards pilot side. This would allow operation with the PC drawer slid in and out of the way. But I'm also considering abandoning the whole damn idea and just going with a Garmin 196 and a separate CD player.

S. Todd Bartrim
Turbo 13B
RX-9endurance
C-FSTB
http://www3.telus.net/haywire/RV-9/C-FSTB.htm

        "Imagination is more important than knowledge"
                                        -Albert Einstein