new lap top

[speach (Simon)]

Thinking of getting a new lap top solely for the camera and the mount. I run APT, PHD, cartes du ciel, neq6 mount, a canon 1100d and zwo 1600mmc cameras that all it would have to run. The question to you computer types is what would be the specs I'd need?

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

I'd say anything with an Intel i5 and 8 GB of RAM will suffice.

Will you be processing images on this new lap top, or just using it to control the mount and acquire data?

edit:

AVOID at all costs laptops using eMMC. They are ****E. Nay, TOTALLY ****E (they should be bloody well made illegal...). Get one that has a nice screen with good viewing angles.

[Atmos (Colin)]

My imaging laptop is the equivalent of an Intel i5 and has 8GB of ram and a 1TB HD, it does perfectly fine. It’s biggest downfall is that it runs Windows

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

My imaging laptop is the equivalent of an Intel i5 and has 8GB of ram and a 1TB HD, it does perfectly fine. It’s biggest downfall is that it runs Windows

edit: running Windows is pretty much a requirement, since there's so few astro imaging apps for OS X or GNU/Linux. Yes, I know PI runs on Linux, and you can get kstars (which is quite good actually) on GNU/Linux too. But stuff like Sky X, Maxim DL, autostakkert etc are well...very restrictive and there's no chance in hell that they'll be ported to other platforms sadly. My advice is to have a minimal of software installed on said laptop and turn off network and bluetooth. running a limited user account is a great idea too, but it's prolly too difficult to do on Windows (easy if you're on a network running AD of course). If it's just an imaging scope, you'll really only need USB...

[darrellx (Darrell)]

Last year I did exactly this. New laptop to run everything.

I got a MSI Gaming Laptop with an excellent screen. 8GB RAM; 126GB SSD and 1TB HDD; i7 processor.

My main concern, and what I was really after, was a number of USB3 ports. It came with 2x USB3 Type A, 1x USB3 Type C, 1x USB2.

It runs all my software and I do some preprocessing with CCDStack and sometimes PaintShop.

The other issue was the battery. With everything humming along I get about three to three and a half hours out of the battery.

Darrell

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

I have an ol' Compaq Win7 laptop out in the observatory running similar gear to you. Does the job, and connects back to the "office" using CAT6 cable and Teamviewer.

For solar imaging I needed a fast USB3 and like Darrell went for a sexy MSI laptop with large SSD drive. Fantastic machine works 110% for me.

[speach (Simon)]

thanks all