I have Nobletec Odyssey running on a Dell and Nobletec VNS running on a Toughbook. The Dell stays below hooked up to a Furuno GPS, Comnav autopilot and the SH 2150 for AIS. The Toughbook is totally portable as it has built in GPS, great for the upper helm, it can also drive the autopilot. Both laptops talk to the Ipad using Splashtop over the boats wifi, the Ipad can control the Nobletec programs remotely.
The Ipad also has 4 different nav programs of its own, the one I like the best is the Nobletec app TZ followed by the Garmin BlueChart. Sure hope that Apple comes out with a bigger screen Ipad, with the new apps coming out, I would fix mount one at the lower helm......