Thank you Pavel Bahtinov. The advent of your mask has seen my need for a large and reasonably powerful laptop dissappear.
Take 1: Dreary Saturday morning with little likelihood of clearing for tonight. Project time!
Because I really needed DSLR focussing controlled by ImagesPlus, I also used ImagesPlus to control and capture/store my astro images as part of the process. While it was there I also ran PHD Guiding off the same laptop.
The large Toshiba lappy drew 3.9 amps when imaging/capturing.
Now - because of the Bahtinov mask, I can do away with DSLR Focus and Images Plus. The only reason I ran ImagesPlus camera control is because I already had it hooked up to do my focus first. Nice, but unwieldy. Post-processing is done on my 64-bit desktop unit at home anyways.
I now have an Asus eeePC running XP to control JUST PHD Guiding. Nothing more. Focus is performed in two seconds flat with the mask, and camera control is now via a timer/release cable that can perform repetitive tasks. I have a 2Gb card in the camera - it is more than capable of taking a nights' worth of images. The small laptop draws about 1 amp while guiding because I can shut the lid and shut down the display - but leave the unit humming along guiding.
I can now do away with my large laptop hutch - and while I'm at it the table it sat on too. I've constructed a small table for my G11, which cradles the eeePC nicely, and is so close to the mount that I only need a standard length USB cable to run the guide camera. Nice! No more long cables to trip on.
Anyhow - here it is now.
1) The table connected to the Losmandy Digital Drive controller support posts.
2) With laptop in the guiding position (lid closed but running) - keeping the keyboard dry.
3) Open lappy to show clearances.
4) The whole shebang.
Thanks for reading!