LV laptop

[pete_dunham]

I am thinking about getting a laptop to use for personal LabVIEW projects. Starting out with just a simple simple USB DAQ device (USB-6009). Mostly because of my budget and I want to see what I can get out of it.

Anybody have recommendations on PC laptops that seem to be solid with LabVIEW? Looking for something that is cheap and small...but obviously will work.

My main computer is a laptop, so not looking to invest a ton, just something that will work and won't make my code crawl.

[PaulG.]

You should be able to get a decent laptop for $500 to $1K. I have a mid-range 17" HP laptop I bought cheap (floor demo) years ago. It has done well with 7.11, 8.0, 8.20 and 8.5. It's running XP but if I were buying one now I would get it with Windows 7. I hear W7 has a lot less overhead and it is a lot less bloated than Vista and reportedly runs very well even on older laptops.

All that said, one thing I would not do is buy another HP unless it came with the operating system ONLY. HP's are notorious for bloatware. Mine included.

If I had to do it again I would stick with a name brand - and Dell would be my first choice. A lot of folks here swear by IBM thinkpads. They are OK, too. Not as inexpensive as you might like but they are solid.

I can't speak for 2009. I have no idea how it would run on a laptop.

I have the USB 6008 at home, too. Every self-respecting Test Engineer needs a cheap NI DAQ at home.

[John Lokanis]

I have not been impressed with the quality of Dell laptop components. I would look at the Thinkpad or better yet, get a MacBook Pro and use bootcamp.

[Nick S]

I used a mid-range IBM ThinkPad with 8.5 for 1.5 years, and now use 8.6 on a Dell Latitude. I've never had any problems I could attribute to the laptops. I agree with PaulG - a mid-range ($500-$1000) laptop from Dell would do well for what you need.

[jgcode]

HP's are notorious for bloatware. Mine included.

Great point! I stay away from their peripherals too due to this reason about their device drivers.

I had a VIAO that served me well for 6+ years, but I think they are a little expensive for what you get.

We had Lenovo's at my last work place and they were great (although again a little expensive compared to Dell).

We currently use Dell at this job and they seem to run fine and are cheap. The boss and admin use Apple.

One LAVA topic that comes to mind is that when people discussed this they said you should make sure you work PC has the same res as your home/remote PC (in this case both laptops). Makes coding life easier.

[crelf]

I have not been impressed with the quality of Dell laptop components.

I've always had Dell laptops at home, and haven't had a problem with them. That said, my current one is an Inspiron 8200 that's pretty old because it's so reliable, so I don't have any data from after that model

[Wim]

Hi,

on my previous job I had a DELL latitude D830 running vista, LV8.5 and LV 8.6 never had any problems with it.

Now I have a Thinkpad SL500 with VISTA and the same LV versions on it ... and it's the same... no problems at all.

Cheers,

Wim

[shoneill]

HP's are notorious for bloatware. Mine included.

I solved this problem with my Thinkpad R60 by creating my own custom windows installer using nlite. Great software, makes re-installing windows a breeze. All vedor-specific drivers included in my installer (which can be set to run unattended BTW).

Otherwise, back on topic, I have a Thinkpad (as mentioned already) and am quite happy. HDD dies a few weeks ago and when I phoned support (had purchased 3 Year support) the guy asked me "Are you sure it's the HDD?" I said "Yes" and he said "OK, I'll send a new one to you by courier". Next day I had a new drive. Support from Lenovo kind of impressed me.

Maybe the fact that the swiss distribution for Lenovo is 5 km away from me helped though....

Shane.

Edited September 1, 2009 by shoneill

[Val Brown]

FWIW you couldn't pay me to use Dell, HP or Compaq let alone give me one of have me buy them. Don't get me wrong -- all of them are fine if you don't mind:

1. bloatware

2. proprietary blotware

3. challenges if you go off their spec at all

I have used Acer for years without any problems with the computer. I also use a MacBook Pro with XP installed, Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion. I can't do without my Mac at this point -- all internet is done via it including email, web browsing (using Safari), etc. All of my LV work is in Windows so I run LV within XP on my MBP both in Fusion (so virtualization) as well as in Boot Camp when I need real throughput for my USB-accessed hardware.

FWIW you couldn't pay me to use Dell, HP or Compaq let alone give me one of have me buy them. Don't get me wrong -- all of them are fine if you don't mind:

1. bloatware

2. proprietary blotware

3. challenges if you go off their spec at all

I have used Acer for years without any problems with the computer. I also use a MacBook Pro with XP installed, Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion. I can't do without my Mac at this point -- all internet is done via it including email, web browsing (using Safari), etc. All of my LV work is in Windows so I run LV within XP on my MBP both in Fusion (so virtualization) as well as in Boot Camp when I need real throughput for my USB-accessed hardware.

Edited September 1, 2009 by Val Brown

[Cat]

I've mostly bought ThinkPads. Lots and lots of ThinkPads. I was concerned when IBM sold that line off to Lenovo, but so far it doesn't seem to have affected the quality. They are pretty solid machines.

Dell laptops used to be notoriously bad, but my last laptop purchase was a Dell, since it was the only place to get a double dual core laptop and I needed lots of processing power. Customer support was very responsive when it got delivered with a non-functioning eSATA port...

I'll second the comment someone else made about making sure your two laptops have the same native screen resolution. I've got 3 development laptops with different resolutions, and it gets annoying when I develop on the widescreen one, and forget that it need to run on my "ancient" 1024x768 box, too.

[Gary Rubin]

Or you could just forget about the whole budget thing and go with one of these.

[Cat]

Or you could just forget about the whole budget thing and go with one of these.

[hooovahh]

I solved this problem with my Thinkpad R60 by creating my own custom windows installer using nlite. Great software, makes re-installing windows a breeze. All vedor-specific drivers included in my installer (which can be set to run unattended BTW).

Shane.

Yeah I like nlite, but if you just want to minimize what things are installed on your Windows machine after a full XP is installed on it, I recommend XP Lite, it's a program that you install on a normal XP machine, then it removes services, and extras to make it smaller and faster. There is a free version and a pro, the pro gives you more access to other services, but most of them break Windows, so I don't recommend it.

Not to digress too much but they also have 98Lite which can reduce the Windows 98 install size down to about 50MB with full explorer shell, not always very useful, but fun to play with. You could take that 50MB of files, burn it to a CD, then on boot up copy that to a RAM drive, and boot into a full Windows environment...sure a 11 year old operating system but it was fun to do when the OS was only 6 years old.

EDIT: It appears they have the record to 8MB for Windows 98 with explorer.

[George Pollock]

I have used a Dell Latitude for a couple of years. LV 8.6 now. No problems at all.

BUT, if you have fat fingers like me (are you an adult?) then you will find wiring with a little finger pad is a short-cut to insanity. I got a large diameter Kensington track ball. Works perfectly.

[shoneill]

I have used a Dell Latitude for a couple of years. LV 8.6 now. No problems at all.

BUT, if you have fat fingers like me (are you an adult?) then you will find wiring with a little finger pad is a short-cut to insanity. I got a large diameter Kensington track ball. Works perfectly.

Oh, on the topic of keyboards, my only gripe with my Thinkpad is that the left-bottom key on the keyboard (which is otherwise a real pleasure to use) is the Function key and not the Ctrl Key as normal.

This makes switching between computers a bit tiresome but since I recently bought a KVM that problem is kind of solved.....

Shane.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

I have not been impressed with the quality of Dell laptop components. I would look at the Thinkpad or better yet, get a MacBook Pro and use bootcamp.

I had a Dell Latitude C 620 or so, then a VAIO and now a Dell Latitude D 830. They all worked well for a long time, with almost daily full time use, and with the Vaio having some issues with certain software drivers. The first Dell's display stopped working after almost 3 years, just a the end of our 3 year onsite support we got with it, and Dell responded promptly replacing first the display, which didn't help, and the next day the system board, which helped because apparently the power converter on there was bad.

I did however specifically choose Latitudes eventhough they are more expensive than the other Dell series, because they did look and feel more robust and reliable. Still happy with my D 830 but I recently looked at the newer E Latitude series and it seems the user ratings are rather spread from very enthusiastic to simply abdominal quality.

Rolf Kalbermatter