Laptop help please?

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Hello all,
I have been thinking about purchasing a small laptop to use next to my telescope for a while now. At the moment I am fully self contained with my imaging being through a DSLR and guiding with a Synguider so I have never had a need to run a laptop. But now I wouldn't mind trying a bit of webcam imaging of planets and maybe controling the DSLR through something like EOS utility. I don't think I need a very powerful laptop to do this, or do I? I've never owned a lappy before, just always had PCs.
A friend of mine has a brand new Toshiba NB55D that I think they bought in the post chrissy sales and now don't want (still in box- unopened), which I am thinking about buying. I think they will want about $350 for it. I couldn't find much in terms of reviews or even specs on this model online which is a bit of a worry. This is about all I found http://www.topcashback.co.uk/dabs/Pr...ows_7_Starter_
Anyone seen this model around? Will it be enough for what I want to do:
- Run imaging webcam program and store only the nights images on it
- Control DSLR
- Surf the net if I am away from home
I should point out that all image processing will be carried out on my home PC. I would transfer all the captured files straight to it at the end of the night.
So is this a good deal? or can anyone recommend a better laptop/netbook with a budget up to $500
Thanks
Greg

[Hagar (Doug)]

Hi Greg, any of the modern laptops will do what you want. Even the little netbooks will handle data collection. Manipulation, combination and proxcessing might require a bit of grunt but in most cases the processing will just be slower with down spec machines.

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Thanks for that Doug I might see you next week at the club meeting. I don't know what your weather has been like but I hope it has been better than mine. Over the border here has been terrible the last month. I have not had the scope out since the lunar eclipse.

[2stroke (Jay)]

Just make sure you dont get a netbook with a 16/32gb ssd as the drive speeds are piss poor. Try and also go for a real cpu not a intel atom as the blow bad, look at an intel i3 or core 2 duo or amd's offerings. Also try for a 13" + screen as its impossible to use some adobe apps with less then 1366x768 16:10 or 1280x800 4:3. At that price you won't see a real dedicated gpu, but maybe able to get an amd hd 5145 which would be sweet for photoshop/prem/after effects gpu openGL/openCL acceleration.

[Poita (Peter)]

Okay, that laptop is on a Par with the intel atom, not much chop I'm afraid.
There was a 2nd hand MacBook in the classifieds here for <$500 which is a great little unit as you can run both windows and OSX on it, the USB integration is excellent, it has built in FireWire which cAn be handy and will have more power than you will likely need in a nice sleek form factor.
Otherwise check out kogan online for some good deals on some i3 based new laptops.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Hi Greg. Agree with Doug, that netbook should be fine for what you want to do - the netbook processors are slow, but quite adequate if you don't want to do any heavyweight image processing on them. I use a similar netbook ($247 - atom processor not AMD) for capture from my TIS618 camera, simply because it is better at it than my I7 laptop. It seems that the big laptop processor doesn't take the USB data stream seriously and throttles back to save power - losing data in the process. The netbook goes flat chat all the time and actually does a better job. And it's good enough for web browsing. Regards Ray

[CapturingTheNight (Greg)]

Thank you very much for the thoughts and advice Ray, Peter and Jay
I decided not to purchase that netbook off my friend. I want to do a bit more research and prioritise my spending before I get a laptop. I'm thinking I might increase my budget for this and get something a bit more powerful to future proof myself against future uses of it.
Cheers
Greg