New Astro Laptop

[jakob]

My Aldi Netbook is dead!

I Just got Ascom, Eqascom, Starshooter, Alignemaster, Cartes du Ciel and PHD2 working great and now I have to start again.

Been looking for a simple, long battery life replacement.
I can get a similar Netbook (HP) in run-out sale but I found this:

HP Stream Laptop, Celeron processor, 2GB Ram & 32GB storage (32 GB eMMC) Windows 8.1, USB2 & USB3.

This should be able to do the job or am I missing something?

Any advise most welcome!

[astronobob]

Hi Jakob,

From an amature puuta wise, I do know that them stats will very well do what your asking of it.
I have used a backup lappy for sinilar, be surprised how little basic astro operation needs to work, my ol Compaq has only 1 usb2 which I link into a 4way bus, 1/2 meg of ram and 18 gig space which 10gig are taken up in photos, Lol
Only draw back is the 1.4hrtz processing speed, not that matters much once things get running, mainly when open progs and apps etc, it just takes a while longer to open.

Maybe some other IISpacers will chime in to confirm bettera - but it should do the job well ?

Hope this is in ball park & of some use to you . .

[gregbradley]

Probably what is most important is the operating system. Anything with Vista I would avoid as it was very astro - unfriendly.

Multiple USB ports is also important.

After that I would rate lots of memory as important. Astro applications don't seem too intensive for the computer chip but Sky X probably takes a bit more due to the graphics (I have had it occasionally drop out because I clicked on a location near the SCP to find ??!!).

For imaging 32gb is not much but if you transfer your images regularly to another computer it may be fine. You can always plug in an external hard drive as well.

Greg.

[jakob]

Thanks Bob & Greg,

I bought the HP Stream Notebook and am in the middle of loading the Astro bits. So far everything looks good.
Free HD space is 17GB, this should be OK for running the Mount etc.
If needed I just plug a USB drive, but I transfer my data straight from the SD card to the processing PC.
The battery life on the HP is pretty good since there is no fan or HDD to drive.

For my purpose this Notebook looks a pretty good solution for under $300.

[glend]

Wow under $300 that is a good deal. I am looking as well, my old MSI netbook struggles with Metaguide and BYEOS at the same time, and locked up on me a couple of nights ago.

I will have a look at the HP Stream.

BTW Jakob, that's Win 8 isn't it? Make sure turn off all the 'helper' features that slow it down. Win 8 can be a dog. I have a Acer Aspire as my General computer and when I first turned it on it was so slow.... compared to my old Win machine. Download a registry cleaner as well. There are heaps of online advice on speeding up Win 8.

[Camelopardalis]

Sounds good Jakob, like you say all you really need is good battery life and enough horsepower to run data down the USB ports.

Did you get the hot pink one? :lol:

[jakob]

Glen,
It's w8.1 and using the desktop works well.
The tiled interface does all the fancy stuff and it can be by-passed.

Dunk,
No, pink was 13" !
Blue is my colour.