Small Form Factor PCs vs Laptops

[glend (Glen)]

Hi all, I looked at this topic last year and cold not justify it, but I was revisiting it again trying to locate the components to assemble a small form factor PC for my observatory. Looking to see if the cost effectiveness has improved. Have been looking at this one:

https://www.umart.com.au/umart1/pro/...468&sid=196741

which at $159 seems pretty cheap but is anyone out there actually using these for astro work? This one may not have enough USB ports nor come with Win 8 (so added costs for an OS).
All that I would be running is: Metgaguide, BYEOS. Prefer Win 8 if possible. My Planetarium software (Sky Safari Pro) will stay on my Android tablet connected via Nexus wifi to the drive the NEQ6.

What are the recent experiences, are these Barebones boxes really cost effective compared to say a budget laptop?

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Looks like it would be OK for Linux, but when you add in the cost of RAM, an OS and some form of data input/output and maybe battery backed power and a hard disk, a cheap Celeron laptop might be a better bet - a quad Atom might even do the job OK.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Yeah and the little laptops, like the HP stream, have quite long battery life and include OS, etc. On top of that, they use a lot less power for when you're off grid.

[glend (Glen)]

Ok, I am convinced. The reviews I have been reading on the HP Stream 11 indicate battery life of over nine hours in tests and that's good enough for a night of dark site guiding, and camera control. Harvey Norman still has them at $288 but I suspect they are being cleared now as there is a new Stream that is popping up in searches (more expensive too). Thanks for the suggestion Dunk, most of the HN stores near me are out of stock but they are still available for order so I might go with that.

[glend (Glen)]

My HP Stream arrived yesterday and it is a surprisingly capable little unit. Once I got rid of all the 'user experience features' which hinder performance on Windows 8.1 (which I had done previously on my big laptop) it was getting speeds similiar to my big system. I ran registry cleaner as well and got rid of a few hundred performance issues. Stripped out all the installed apps that are useless to me and reduced the system to a pure astro platform, so it's really fast now. Put on BYEOS, Metaguide, MetaMonitor, Red Screen, downloaded the ASI camera drivers, and did some testing with the cameras. It's performing great so far. Still have to get a couple of other apps onto it but it is ready for the field now. Thanks Dunk, for the recommendation of this nice little laptop.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Nice one Glen, hope it works out the only thing I could fault with them is the local storage isn't much, but with long guided subs, a nights' imaging doesn't amount to much.

[glend (Glen)]

I actually still capture to a big SD card in my camera so I don't need the laptop to do that. But I have stuck a 32gb SD card in the HP Stream as well.

[algwat (Alan)]

I saw this on life hacker, http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/11/go...elling-for-85/

Interesting tech, may be good for remote control, and image transfer, not processing. WIFI connections, and the article shows links to bigger ASUS units, with two usb ports.... rgds, alan