Looking for a new netbook or laptop for DSO imaging

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Sure, but c'mon Carl - we're talking astrophotography here. We're talking about folks that need grunt and power to process images and drive half a dozen bits of kit and as many applications in real time without a hiccup and with headroom to spare. The average read-your-email and browse-the-web ma & pa user is not relevant to the OP or my comments.

Paul isn't using this computer he wants to buy for astrophotography. He's only using it for data collection. You don't need a top spec job to do menial work.

With your work, your biggest bottleneck is the HD and the bus speed it runs at and communicates with the computer. Your RAM, no matter how much you have, can't handle all that processing concurrently anyway, that's why your computer has a swap file on the HD to dump page memory to. If that file isn't large or fast enough, everything slows down. I'd suggest that if you really want to see things zing along, it's best to have multiple HD's in your computer and have one setup exclusively as the swap file, another to store data and the main drive just for programs and the OS. If you use a laptop, then you're restricted to one fast drive, as your external drives will be much slower.

But the more RAM you do have, the quicker things will also get done.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Mate, I'm actually not sure the point you're trying to make unless it's just MS bashing? In any case I repeat, I'm only considering astrophotography needs, nothing else.

The point I was making is that most software, including MS's, is overbloated with "functionality" choices that most will never use, and that costs accordingly. For astrophotography, you need fairly powerful software in much of the cases you use it for, but most of your power you need is in the computer. Even some of the astrophotography software could be said to be bloatware because of some of the (actually) superfluous functionality built into it. For instance, do you really need any photometric analysis routines in your software at all?? Fourier analysis routines etc etc...just to take and process piccies??

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

USB transfer will occur only at the speed the bus is able to handle. Your biggest bottleneck is your HD. It will also be your RAM if you have to do any processing, but less so than the HD. So, what you need is a large, fast HD and a decent amount of RAM that runs at a fast bus speed.

Cool. Is it fair to assume that a laptop with a faster CPU/Bus/RAM will allow me to have more devices sharing the same USB line with less conflicts both in term of data transfer and power for the devices?

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Ok getting close on my selection. Dell has great prices at present i7, 7200rpm HD and 4 gig standard, but upgradeable for under a 1000. Next question. What about operating system? 64 or 32 bit? Will all the software for guiding, and capture work under 64 bit or should I just get 32bit win 7?

I almost went 32 bit but in a what-the-heck moment took the plunge and went 64 bit. It's all working and I've had no serious issues to date. But that of course doesn't mean it will work for you! I guess you could simply say I am proof that it does work!

TheSkyX
CCDSoft
CCDAutopilot V4 and now V5
Focusmax driving Robofocus
Automadome
USB->serial converters (Belkin)
CCDStack & CCDIS

Interestingly, with the exception of the USB->Serial converter drivers and CCDIS64, none of these are native 64 bit apps.

BTW, the only gotcha with my Dell was that it doesn't have a VGA or DVI port. It has a mini DisplayPort. I had to buy an adaptor cable for when I want to hook up a second monitor.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Ok getting close on my selection. Dell has great prices at present i7, 7200rpm HD and 4 gig standard, but upgradeable for under a 1000. Next question. What about operating system? 64 or 32 bit? Will all the software for guiding, and capture work under 64 bit or should I just get 32bit win 7?

That's a good buy. You don't need top spec, but you still need something capable enough to handle the data you gather.

Some will say go 64Bit, but you have to remember whether there are drivers for your OS that will handle all the software under 64Bit. You also have to consider data throughput. 64Bit data takes no more time to process than 32Bit data with an OS that can handle it. But, it also takes up more storage space and needs powerful chips and onboard buses to handle it. That's why these 64Bit systems are so high spec. But, if the drivers are there for your software and it's data throughput and manipulation you're looking for, then 64Bit's the go.

Though, I'd be inclined to use 32Bit simply because you can get by collecting the data just as easily with a 32Bit system without all the overheads needed to run 64Bit, since you're not going to be doing anything like processor intensive work. The cameras you're using are only 32bit and the USB bus is only a 32bit bus. Your computer would be sitting there dumb idle for most of the time waiting for your data collection devices to talk to it. If all you're doing is running, say, PhD and MaximDL to guide and capture a 32Bit system could handle that with no problems.

[marc4darkskies (Marcus)]

Originally Posted by renormalised

...

With your work, your biggest bottleneck is the HD ... Your RAM, no matter how much you have, can't handle all that processing concurrently anyway, that's why your computer has a swap file on the HD to dump page memory to.

Well no, my biggest bottleneck was actually processor capacity and memory!! Swap files will never be fast enough, especially for real time apps, unless they are on a solid state device, and even that is no guarantee. A multi-core processor like mine is capable of threading across 8 CPUs and 64 bits means I can use all of my 6G memory for those processors (cf: 3G max in Win 32 I think?). While not quite enough to prevent swap file use, 6G will get close if I don't start up other memory hungry apps (eg CCDStack, Photoshop etc) while imaging and assuming the apps I'm running aren't too old so that they rely on a swap file being present for normal operation.

So the objective is really to minimise the use of a swap file with a suitably powerful processor and an adequate amount of RAM. Some say you can eliminate the swap file altogether with 12G or more of memory in Win7 64 bit machine but that's probably unwise.

Originally Posted by renormalised

The point I was making is that most software, including MS's, is overbloated with "functionality" choices that most will never use, and that costs accordingly. For astrophotography, you need fairly powerful software in much of the cases you use it for, but most of your power you need is in the computer. Even some of the astrophotography software could be said to be bloatware because of some of the (actually) superfluous functionality built into it. For instance, do you really need any photometric analysis routines in your software at all?? Fourier analysis routines etc etc...just to take and process piccies??

... Bloatware: A term used to describe software that is amply endowed with functionality to suit the vast majority of users. Cf: Waifware: Software that has enough functionality to satisfy only the needs of an elite few, ignoring the needs of most users ... but it runs really fast and lean!

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

Well no, my biggest bottleneck was actually processor capacity and memory!! Swap files will never be fast enough, especially for real time apps, unless they are on a solid state device, and even that is no guarantee. A multi-core processor like mine is capable of threading across 8 CPUs and 64 bits means I can use all of my 6G memory for those processors (cf: 3G max in Win 32 I think?). While not quite enough to prevent swap file use, 6G will get close if I don't start up other memory hungry apps (eg CCDStack, Photoshop etc) while imaging and assuming the apps I'm running aren't too old so that they rely on a swap file being present for normal operation.

So the objective is really to minimise the use of a swap file with a suitably powerful processor and an adequate amount of RAM. Some say you can eliminate the swap file altogether with 12G or more of memory in Win7 64 bit machine but that's probably unwise.

You're running all your work from your laptop, so you're going to need something pretty powerful. But you don't have to run image processing and such concurrently with everything else. That would chew up resources like it's going out of fashion!!!. If you're trying to run everything in memory, then it's no wonder you need the grunt, otherwise you'd have to rely on your swap file to handle the work. That's where the bottleneck would occur. You'd need at least 10000rpm sata drives to handle it, and big ones at that. Or solid state storage drives. I can see the $$$ ticking over even as we speak!!!

Eliminating the swap file would be something I wouldn't recommend, even if it was possible to do so with 12G of memory. There will always be processes which will consume all or most of your available memory.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

... Bloatware: A term used to describe software that is amply endowed with functionality to suit the vast majority of users. Cf: Waifware: Software that has enough functionality to satisfy only the needs of an elite few, ignoring the needs of most users ... but it runs really fast and lean!

Your far better off to have an app that will do the work required and be fast and efficient than to have some memory hogging app with 1001 functions, all seeing and dancing, most of which you'll never use.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Cool. Is it fair to assume that a laptop with a faster CPU/Bus/RAM will allow me to have more devices sharing the same USB line with less conflicts both in term of data transfer and power for the devices?

That's correct, but it has its limits.

[Paul Haese]

Just to report back I bought a HP netbook for the task. It came with 500gig HD, 1gig of memory (but could do with some more), dual core atom intel processor and three USB ports. I will have to investigate a decent USB hub for it so that I can put robofocus on the scopes.

So far it has worked but there as usual are some quirky things about win 7 as in every edition they have brought out. Most things worked straight off the bat but my Orion SSAG required 64 bit drivers on a 32 bit system to work , which I find really odd, since that driver should not work.

As a matter of opinion I don't see that Win 7 is any better than Vista really. Vista for me was stable, albeit it did not like CCDsoft 5 for some reason.

Anyway, for now this is working nicely and collecting data. It does not process any data, just collects what I want.

[Kal (Andrew)]

I think you made the right choice Paul, for data collection you don;t need much grunt and the dual core netbook will be more than up to the task.

Originally Posted by renormalised

What I was saying about Marcus's monster masher was when you compare the machines from a few years back to ones now, the relative amount of work they do is the same, but the real productivity increases just aren't there, when you listen to all the hype and look at it objectively. Relatively speaking, the machines from back then could do the same jobs as the ones are doing now, but because the amount of data we collect now is greater, and the software that we run on them has become more bloated, the machines have to consequently become more powerful to handle the workload.

lol Carl, you make me laugh! I guess blueray on a HD isn't any better than an old VCR with your argument! I mean, data amount has increased but the "real work" that they do is the same?! I mean, you can still watch a movie on both! (I know which one I'd prefer to watch a movie on though )