Help with new laptop purchase

[Tay_melbourne (Taylor)]

Hello all.

I've found myself in a bit of trouble yesterday as my laptop screen has broken.
Not to worry as I was looking to upgrade soon anyway. My last laptop was an 2010 Apple MacBook Pro.

I'm hoping that someone is able to shed some light as for what laptop would be best for astrophotography. I'm very new to the hobby. But have a beginner set up and feel a laptop is vital for the future.

Can anyone recommend the best laptop to get? Being Mac or PC.
I'm currently using a DSLR but feel down the track I will get a CCD camera and run it through my laptop for imaging
Also use it for processing obviously.

I'm very new to this and hopefully you can help in anyway. Also my budget is pretty stretchy haha if that helps

Thanks in advance Tay

[glend (Glen)]

For DSLR control, guide operation, etc you can get away with a fairly low end laptop, something like an HPstream for example. However if your going to be processing on the same platform then you need a higher end machine. I use a low end HPStream in my observatory, and take It's to the dark site, It's very long battery life is a big plus. Image processing is done on my big laptop at home with a good photo editing screen. So choice is dependent on what you require It's to do, power availability, and budget.

[speach (Simon)]

I'd advise you not to attempt processing on the laptop. Get a dedicated PC and a HD monitor of at least 24". For controlling your mount camera etc just a cheap low end laptop will do. I'm in the same position but my query is about windows 10.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Originally Posted by speach

I'd advise you not to attempt processing on the laptop. Get a dedicated PC and a HD monitor of at least 24". For controlling your mount camera etc just a cheap low end laptop will do. I'm in the same position but my query is about windows 10.

I do all my processing on my laptop, an XPS15, and more recently on my Surface Pro 3. They both have excellent screens and even the i5 SP3 is fast enough for most of my processing in Pixinsight and Photoshop, plus it's nice to be able to do a lot of my processing on the lounge using the SP3 as a tablet with the Pen.

To the OP, if you want a good laptop to do everything then IMO look no further than the XPS series or the Surface Pros - both of those have excellent build quality and excellent screens. Of course if don't want a touch screen, and don't mind running some astro software through a VM, then just get another MBP

[bugeater (Marty)]

I've got a recent Dell i3 touchscreen laptop. It was pretty cheap and I really like it. Runs everything I need. I was mainly worried about how long astrotortilla would take, but it's pretty quick enough. I don't image process on it though. That's done on my desktop. I'd hate to think how slow the laptop would be with Pixinsight.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

some astro software is either not available on MACs or less feature rich so a PC is probably the better bet. i used my surface pro 3 for a long time and it really handled it well, the only issue is that you need a usb hub because it only has 1 port. apart from that, it is a great all round computer, laptop and tablet.

[Tay_melbourne (Taylor)]

Thanks for the quick replies!
I feel that I would like to get a Laptop for then I can take it traveling and process my normal photography as well.
I don't think I need a laptop just yet to use with my telescope. So I feel that the XPS15 is sounding quick good. Having a Windows might be easier with getting software that is compatable.

I may have to do some more research haha.
Thanks for the help, it is a big learning curve for me (astrophotography) but it's very exciting and I'm looking forward to producing some images ��

Thanks Tay

[Dunc78 (Duncan)]

Thats funny I was just about to asks a similar question. I too own a Macbook but after seeing everyone at SnakeValley last weekend with their PC laptops was considering buying a cheap refurbished laptop to run my scope from. Then I would do my image processing on my macbook. Been so long since I used a PC I am not even sure what specs to look for.

Found a few similar to these around $200-300:
Intel 2nd Gen Core i5 Processor 2430M 2.4Hz
4GB RAM (upgradable to 8GB)
13.3" (1366 x 768)
500GB Hard Drive
Webcam
WIFI, Bluetooth
Windows 7 Home Premium preinstalled
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium license
3mth Warranty

Would something like this be ok to run an astrophotography set-up?
Does the price seem reasonable? Or does anyone know of a good site for refurbished laptops? Will be spending enough on the scope set-up don't want to spend too much on the laptop.

Thanks
Duncan

[NorthernLight (Max)]

I wouldn't bother buying 2 machines. I recently bought a HP ProBook with an i7 and a SSD drive. It runs Stellarium with all features on as well as BackyardEos and PhD 2 without so much as breathing hard. My image processing is done with it as well on Startools, DSS, PS CS6 with my colour calibrated 24" LCD. It is so fast on start up and processing images that I feel no need to change to a different machine. When I look at software for Astro I cannot help but wonder why people bother with a Mac. The only way to get a Mac ready for astrophotography is by emulating Windows. Get a Windows laptop with an I7, min. 8GB RAM and a SSD drive and a gianormous external USB 3 external drive plus a decent colour calibrated LCD that displays Adobe RGB and that's all you need (and a Wacom graphics tablet).

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Laptops have come a long way in capabilities. They used to be the fragile, underspecced short lived poor cousin of the desktop. At work we are shifting steadily to all laptop using docking stations at the desk. Most user are getting an i5 standard from DELL and it is quite capable for most purposes with the advantage of WiFi to reduce cabling etc in our new premises. They don't hold data, that is all on the servers, they just process.

The bigger i7 laptops although heavier are still a lot lighter than their predecessors and are quite capable of some serious processing. Marketing have the full Adobe Photoshop Cloud Suite loaded with no issue.
Buy something that can do it all if you can, setup external storage so you can keep it clean and backed up. You'll get a bigger screen so running capture and guiding together isn't a squint session and you'll get longer battery life and more reliability.

[sil (Steve)]

I think some people are misunderstanding laptop + desktop vs laptop only. Yes laptops are very capable of replacing a desktop but there are bottlenecks which can hinder usefulness. If you are imaging with a laptop you are usually capturing video. Here a SSD drive will give you better sustained recording performance than a HDD. SSD drives are also smaller capacity so you have a limit to how much you can capture in an imaging session and you really should be moving video streams off to another location to keep space as free as possible. Laptop CPUs use multiple cores to trade off against raw speed (3GHz CPUs have been with us for 15yrs) so your software may not make use of the cores (tasks like capturing video are often only handled by one core so if you need to capture high frame rates its the GHz speed that limits you, if you need to control a lot of devices simultaneously then more cores are your friend). Screen quality means little for capture but USB3 is more important. Gaming graphics chip is useless for capture.

If you want a laptop for capture than get a laptop for capture and do not do anything else with it. Anything else you install will take up space plus slow down the operating system, both of which will lower the capture frame rate and effect battery running time. Internet security software will slow it too.

Best solution is a capture laptop without bells and whistles that lets you capture a lot of data as fast as possible (high GHz CPU with at least two cores and a large capacity SSD drive). Process the data on another machine clogged with whatever software you want but if you compromise what you can capture you are limiting the possibilities of your imaging. Buying a laptop just because you want to buy a new toy is wasting your money and there are plenty of people who will happily take it.