Keeping the costs down
GGirzzard, first off I'd not recommend using a brand new computer for boat nav. The sea gods just don't like the things. Between salt water and tipping nav stations you are bound to have a premature failure. There are cheap laptops $300 that you can install open source software on that seem to stay under the radar of the sea gods.
I use NOAA maps, Linux OS, OpenCPN nav software and the boats RayMarine 300 GPS on my recycled Dell Latitude 600 laptop.
Key thing to look for are the ability to run the laptop off 12 volts. The AC-DC adapter will say various things like "output 19 volts DC." You want to check the battery itself as that is the real story. If should say 12 volts. Otherwise you will be required to turn your 12 volt DC to 110 volt AC with an inverter then turn it back to some voltage other than 12 volt DC with a wall wart. Pretty inefficient and all that stuff has to have a home. Powering with ships mains just takes a wire from the electrical panel with a plug that fits your computer.
You also want to consider where you will be putting all the gear for this. A real slick setup is to mount your laptop to a docking station then port the mouse/keyboard/video to the DVD player mounted on a swivel at the nav station. That way the DVD acts as your monitor and can entertain the guests with movies (why this is important is beyond me but they do seem to like it. I'd rather drink and play cards personally, to each his own). I put the docking station under the nav station mounted vertically so it does not get stepped on, splashed (as much), or slide off the nav station. I can see it from the cockpit if I step away from the helm. Since the paper charts and NOAA computer charts are very similar I can reference the boats position on the monitor and then get the pinpoint data from the paper chart we use in the cockpit.
With all that said there are a couple of things that we cannot escape;
We still need to maintain a set of paper maps,
You will probably have a GPS in either case,
Space and power will be at a premium
You would never go to sea with just a GPS for location information so whatever you take in addition is a wash WRT a chart plotter,
Better, IMHO, is a dedicated marine nav station mounted GPS, a good set of paper charts, knot, depth, and wind instruments and a good set of binos is a much more rugged and relaxed way of sailing in protected waters. Once you get out of sight of land the chart plotter can show you nothing but blue water so what is the point? I find that it is actually faster to look at the autopilot readout of lat/long and find it on the paper map. If you need a block of instruction on reading lat/long on paper charts let me know, it only takes about 2 minutes to master.
