Of course not! There's no reason to believe that a desktop would react differently to the jostling of travel than a laptop, or a TV, or a CD player, or any other piece of electronics that we travel with regularly.
Many people travel with desktop units.
Good luck,
Fred

Hi,
You didn't say whether you have an RV yet? We made sure we bought one with a computer desk and brought our desktop computer with us. The CPU sits on the floor under the desk, the monitor and printer are on the top. We bought fasteners also which we use to secure the printer and router to the desktop itself. They're removable although we leave them in place. We use a sofa pillow to keep the monitor from tipping over. Before we bought the fasteners, our printer was sliding around on the desktop when we traveled. Now it doesn't budge.
Our desk is in the rear of our 5th wheel and gets the most motion when moving and it does fine.
We actually bought a new desktop yesterday so are obviously happy with the setup.

Judy

Hi Gypsy,

You know the old saying: "misery loves company".  Well I was power washing my deck over the weekend and staining a screened in room that sits on  the deck.  I, too, am tired of all the work required to maintain a sticks and bricks home, but the end is in sight.  We hope to be full-timers in September of 2009.

Just hang in there. And think about how much fun you will have in the not too distant future.

Tell us what kind of RV you want to buy. 

Good luck.

Fox

Laptops are more tolerant to travel than desktops.  They are built that way.
You can keep your desktop, but you will want to provide cushioning to dampen the road vibrations.
We have traveled five years with a desktop in our motor home and had several hard drive problems until I moved its location and put it on a foam pad.
We have not had any such problems with our 3 laptops.
-Jim  

We also travel with a desktop. The computer is in the cupboard below the TV and is pretty secure in there. We built another shelf above the computer for the printer and it sits on one of those non-skid pads and doesn't move. We leave the door open when we're sitting so it doesn't get hot. Our computer desk is also in the rear of our 5th wheel and the monitor sits on another non-skid pad for travel. So far so good. We've been through some pretty rough roads and nothing moves and the desktop has been working just fine for 7 months now.

Question (from one who is semi-electronically-challenged): When you back up your entire computer to an EHD, and then do it a second time (like the next day?) does it automatically write over the previous backup or do you then have two on the EHD? If that's the case, then would you erase the older one? Just wondering.

My wife and I fulltimed for three and a half years with my desktop computer under my desk, and her laptop in a tray under her desk.

Not only that, but I had a RAID (large external disk system) in a cabinet next to my desk. We also had an all-in-one laser printer, a color inkjet printer, TV's, a DVR, and lost of other stuff.

As long as everything is fastened down when you get underway, and your RV's power system can protect you from funky RV park power, you should do fine with whatever equipment you want to take. Oh, but do consider weight.

Here is a photo of how we had it all set up for most of our time on the road:

• RV Mobile Office: Desk Area
  

That's my desk in the corner. You can see the computer system box under the desk.

The only problem I had was heat. In the desert near Joshua Tree National Park we hit temperatures over 100 F. I had to put a fan on the floor under the desk to keep the computer cool, even with both air conditioners running full blast all day.

You can see more photos on my RV website:

• RV Mobile Office
  

Connectivity was sometimes a problem, but here is how we handled it:

• Satellite Internet
  
• "Power Assisted" Wi-Fi
  

If you have not chosen an RV, I highly recommend checking the RV Consumer Group's ratings for whatever RV's you are considering, whether new or used:

• RV Consumer Group
  

Have fun computing on the road!

Best regards,
Tom

-- Edited by Tom Donaldson at 10:22, 2008-08-25

I’ve traveled for more than a year with a desktop in my camper.
In the old days the hard-drives couldn’t take much, but these days a desktop is fine for travel.
I use a wireless keyboard and mouse for it. It lives next to my bed with a decent size vga cable for the monitor. I have an internal network via a wireless router, for my laptop as well. A desktop can have much more power for the money than a laptop, these days you can even buy the small-form factor desktops that can fit in small places. (some padding for the desktop is a good idea when traveling).

-- Edited by travelfables at 17:28, 2008-10-25

If your browser is Internet Explorer or Firefox you can export/import your bookmarks/favorites to/from a flat file. You can copy that to a flash drive, if you have one, or even send it to yourself as an attachment to an email, retrieve it on the other machine and then import it into your browser.

Poke around in the 'help' for your browser and you'll find it. You might have to hunt for the 'help'... I'm running IE 7 right now and it took me a while to find it (little teeny tiny >> all the way on the right next to the Tools pulldown).

Hope this helps...