Laptop for LabVIEW

[Dan Bookwalter]

Hello Everyone

I need to get a Laptop for some portable DAQ stuff we have to do from time to time.... does anyone have any recommendations or anything to stay away from ?? sorry all you Mac people but it has to be a windows based machine.

Thanks

Dan

[i2dx]

Hello Everyone

I need to get a Laptop for some portable DAQ stuff we have to do from time to time.... does anyone have any recommendations or anything to stay away from ?? sorry all you Mac people but it has to be a windows based machine.

Thanks

Dan

I use a Samsung P35 (about 2 Years old) with 1,25 GB RAM and a 1600 MHz Processor (Intel Centrino). That works quite good ...

cheers,

CB

[crelf]

I need to get a Laptop for some portable DAQ stuff we have to do from time to time.... does anyone have any recommendations or anything to stay away from ?? sorry all you Mac people but it has to be a windows based machine.

Is it USB, PCMCIA or ethernet based? Any Dell laptop should be more than up to the challenge...

[Aurora]

Stay away from Celeron based processors. They are lower cost, but no good for high end DAQ applications. I have a 1.6Ghz Centrino which handles most apps quite well. Consider a P4 (battery life is comparatively short) or Pentium M (used in the new generation NI PXI embedded controllers).

Consider what else you may be using the laptop for before making a purchase - you generally don't need all the extras something like a Dell Latitude has to offer.

Most new portable DAQ devices are USB based and in the future there may be ExpressCard devices as well. Rather opt for a laptop with an ExpressCard slot than the older PCMCIA slots if you are going to start with a USB device.

[David Wisti]

I'm using a Dell D810 with Labview. It has a nice 15.4 WUXGA LCD that does 1920 X 1200 resolution. It has both trackpoint and touch pad. But the real feature I like the best is a real RS232 serial port on the back, hard to find these days.

[Louis Manfredi]

... a real RS232 serial port on the back, hard to find these days.

Absolutely agree, if there's any chance you'll need to talk to RS232.

I'm working a job now with a 9172 usb for A/D & D/A , and some stepnet stepper drives controlled through the RS-232 port. Worked fine on my development system with a built in serial port (Dell M60) either as source code or as a built application. Got all kinds of buffer overruns on the 9172 when with built application installed in a new HP desktop that used a USB to RS232 dongle for the serial comms. Then switched to built application running on a cheap Dell desktop, new, but with a real serial port, and the das overrun issues went away.

Coincidence? perhaps, could be some other difference between the two machines. Especially since the stepper drive comms and the DAS operation don't overlap in time, but as far as I'm concerned, why throw added complexity into the system, better to stick with systems that have real serial ports.

Best, Louis

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Here is my check list:

If you program with LabVIEW on that laptop, get 1920x1200 or 1600x1050 display depending on how good eyes you have (1920x1200 on laptop screen means pretty small pixels). The screen size should be at least 15".

Choose your DAQ device first and then verify the laptop you buy has a communication support such as PCMCIA or USB 2.0 for the DAQ device.

If you use your laptop on the go, get a Pentium M or Pentium Core Duo processor or AMD Turion processor, these consume less power and battery lasts longer. On the other hand, if you do not use your laptop on the go, you save money if you stick with some non-mobile processor. If you expect very high data acquisition rates, get a Pentium Core 2 Duo, that's the best processor, but only few laptops with that processor are on the market (it's brand new).

Buy an external mouse.

If you write with the laptop, verify that the keyboard is good. IBM/Lenovo has best keyboard to my opinion.

If you intend to use external display, verify that laptop has a DVI-I connector since that works with both DVI and VGA displays.

Get a three year long support contract that convers repair. If you use laptop a lot on the go, you may also consider getting a contract that also covers accidents. If you cannot afford you computer being in service for weeks, verify that the service really is onsite and that they always replace broken parts onsite. I have bad experience on Acer and HP service.

If you are going to use the laptop as a personal device, get a bluetooth connector, since then you can synchronize your bluetooth devices such as your phone.

If you expect to acquire a lot of data, get a 100-120 GB hard drive and verify that the USB 2.0 connector is fast (USB 2.0 standard allows different speed connections). Buy a external USB 2.0 hard drive for data storage. If you expect very very high data amounts, get an external RAID drive stack, there are alternatives up to 2-4 TB.

Get a DVD+RW drive or DVD+/-RW drive.

Verify that there are many enough USB 2.0 connectors. I think four is fine.

If you use Wifi, get a laptop with Wifi a/b/g card integrated.

If you use the laptop on the go, verify that the weight is less than 3kg (what ever in pounds).

1-2 GB central memory is fine depending on your use, do not go with less than 1 GB. Be sure there are two memory units and not only one, since present processors work faster with two units.

I think that's it. I hope this helps. Dell D810, Dell D820, Lenovo 3000 N100, ThinkPad T60 and ThinkPad T61 are probably pretty close to these specs if you just configure it correctly. According to recent study in U.S. IBM/Lenovo laptops are most reliable followed by Apple.

[Karl Rony]

For USB to RS232 adapters, I've had good luck with Prolific based adapters. I've had terrible luck with FDDI based adapters. All my LabVIEW projects use at least one serial port.

My last laptop purchase was a Toshiba. I could turn the wireless Ethernet on and off with a switch on the side. When I reloaded the OS to start clean, the computer came with a support disk that allowed me to load only the applications that I wanted. I really like these two features.