Minimum specs laptop/tablet

[jfox61]

Ok here we go. First the idiot bit. I had a spare laptop after buying the wife a new gaming laptop. It was a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo AMD Athlon 64 x2. I sold it to my Father in Law for £80 as he wanted a cheapy to mess about with. Two day later I decided to get into Astronomy and bought my Brother in Laws setup.

I then read up for a few days and realised I would like to get into astrophotography too. After reading up on it, I realised it was all about portability and most of the stuff was software driven, mounts, autoguiders, cameras etc You know the score, pretty much everything about AP is done through a pc or laptop. So youcan see what a dumbo I was selling a perfectly good laptop for the job and so cheap too .

So after reading all the relevant rubbish above you may have gathered I need a laptop. However it needs to be cheap and cheerful as all it will be used for is my Astronomy, nothing else.

What is the minimum spec that I would need. I am looking at running the following software with a view to upgrading at a later date.

Cart du Ciel

Stellarium

Nebulosity 3, upgrade to MaximDL at a later date

Registax

APT or Backyard EOS

Serif Photoplus X5 or PS4 Elements, I have both and these can be run from my pc if necessary to keep laptop costs down.

Any software I am missing and your thoughts on the above. Thanks

[Mav359]

I'd just make sure that theres loads of RAM in it, 4gb upwards.

I have a PC in my OBs an older Pentium Core 2 Duo 2.2ghz which does the job but it needs more RAM after that it should matter to much, as long as you look after it.

Cheaper laptops tend to be made of cheaper plastics and are less hardwaring, the newer breed of ACER laptops aren't too bad for the money (my brother just bought one) also what ever you buy remove all the junk software that'll be on it as this leech's the resources especially AV software like Norton & McCaffe. Swap the AV out for Sophos or AVG.

One thing i do is share the load, the PC in the OB's does no processing, that all takes place on my main computer indoors because its things like DSS and Photoshop 4 that require the most resource.

[Mav359]

Oh and for software i'd add IMHO.....

Al's Reticule

Align Master

PHD

[jfox61]

Norton and McCaffee always get dumped. I currently run System Mechanic 10 and Kaspersky both have 3 pc licenses so still got 1 pc left on them. I'll seldom use the laptop online, so will have them turned off till I need to do updates to software so they won't take up necessary resources.

However, i'm not looking for new and I don't require a hotshot laptop. Just something capable of running any of the necessary software without overtaxing the laptop. So basically all I am after is somethng to run the program that is most demanding from the list above. Probably disregard the specs for PS or Serif as that will all be done on my pc, which is a fairly high end gaming machine and will handle imaging with ease

[Demonperformer]

Are you planning on doing your stacking/processing on the laptop? I tend to just use the laptop for capture, then transfer the files onto a USB HDD (for keeping) and then process them all on my desktop, which has a bit more oomph. If you do that, you can get away with a lot lower spec laptop.

+1 for Alsreticle, I also have virtual magnifying glass installed (another freebie), as this helps me get the focus as close to spot on as possible, considering the small size of laptop screens.

Oh, and don't forget a kensington lock ... I speak from bitter experience ...

[Islander]

Unless you're running a 64 bit operating system, there's no point in installing more than 4GB of RAM as the system won't be able to access it.

[Orion_the_Hunter]

Intel core i3 processor, 4gb RAM, integrated graphics, 500gb HDD, you should be able to get one for £300-£350.

As Jfox61 says, get rid of Norton or Mcafee, these are VERY RESOURCE HUNGRY and will slow down any computer. I use AVG antivirus, it's free and is also one of the best.

Also, make sure it has as many USB slots as possible.

[Islander]

AVG used to be one of the best but they've dropped the ball somewhat - it's become a bit of a resource monster as well unfortunately (admittedly not as bad as the commercials). Avast or Avira are much better options.

[Demonperformer]

+1 for avast

[pilkinn]

If you want to do planetary imaging you'll need a beefy computer - even if you use a cheap webcam. I' ve just found to my cost that an Intel Atom netbook will just not cut it when capturing large AVI files at even moderate frame rates. So I'm in the process of building a mini-ITX based PC with a SATA3 SSD drive, USB 3.0 ports and a core-i3 prcessor - all to be powered from 12v dc. It's going to be faster than my "main" PC I use for processing the images!

Astrophotography gets you spending one way or the other.

(sent using Tapatalk)

[pel]

I think you're going to be looking at a £350 laptop minimum. As mentioned earlier only a 64bit OS will address anymore than 3gb of memory and a netbook won't cut the mustard. Also as memntioned earlier try not to put Mcafee or any other bloated Anti virus on there. On Windows 7 you can download Microsoft security essentials for free which works perfectly well and is much less resource hungry.

[jfox61]

Any imaging processing will be done away from the laptop. As I say, I am fairly computer literate so am well aware of pc and laptop limitations. My problem is that the most of the software i'm lookng at online, free or otherwise doesn't seem to show minimum specs for operation, hence my original question.

BTW you can access more than 3gb in 32 bit systems. You use a Physical address extension, otherwise known as a PAE switch.

Maybe I should rephrase the question, as looking at it I don't think I made it clear as to what i'm after. All the advice is good by the way guys but my question was vague.

I have a known price I want to pay for the laptop as I will not buy new, and once I know the answers I will know myself which laptop will fit the bill to do all the applications without dying on me.

Basically it's this:- Having looked online, I can't find the minimum specs for most of the software I am looking at using. So does anyoe know, having used said software, what the minimum and recommended specs are for the software. Cheers so far guys.

Nebulosity 3

Cart Du Ciel

Stellarium

Registax

APT

Backyard EOS

Alsreticule

Alignmaster

PHD

Cheers

[Demonperformer]

Except registax, PHD and Alignment I run all those programs (+EOS Utils +Virtual Magnifying Glass) on a 1.66Ghz, Atom, Win 7 (Starter), 2GB ram machine (specifically a samsung NF110). They all run perfectly adequately, with plenty of spare space to be surfing the net while imaging. I would not want to be doing any of the processing (registax, DSS, etc) on this laptop, however.

HTH

[dmahon]

Apart from Registax, which I use on my desktop PC, and BackyardEOS (I use APT instead), I run all the others simultaneously on a Dell Mini 9 netbook.

The only problem I have is screen size, but I just use a virtual larger screen and remote control it from my big screen desktop anyway.

[SniffTheGlove]

I use an old Advent K200 UKT Support - Advent K200 Laptop Lappy to do everything on in the Obsy, from running Sharpcap with an SPC900 and a Conon 350D with APT, then the lappy automatically then converts and process all the avi into bmp and then processes everything through Ninox then copies all the data up to my home server read to run Registax etc.

The lappy also runs 24/7 doing Milkyway on BOINC while doing the above.

I do not notice any problems so suggest you go for a second hand lappy using the K200 as minium spec

[jfox61]

Thanks for that. THe only problem I may envisage after that is possily Stellarium as it does use quite a bit of graphics processing but I still can't find any minimum specs for it anywhere. I may just email the devs and see what they say, unless anyone can point me in the right direction for the specs of course

[Bried]

I run stelarium v0.10.5 on my old acer aspire 5000 with 1gig ram running xp and it works fine.

Not that it's got much to do with this thread but I remember recording 16 channels of simultaneous audio on a pentium III 400mhz (i think! Long time ago). We're a bit spoilt with processing power these days.

[Trull]

I run my imaging rig on a very ageing Apple PowerBook G4 at 1.7GHz with 2Gb RAM... never skips a beat. Don't use AV as there are no viruses on Mac anyway.

This includes Nebulosity/PHD on firewire cam/Shoestring long exp trigger/Shoestring autoguider adaptor/Canon 350D/ SS2K.

[Demonperformer]

Thanks for that. THe only problem I may envisage after that is possily Stellarium as it does use quite a bit of graphics processing but I still can't find any minimum specs for it anywhere. I may just email the devs and see what they say, unless anyone can point me in the right direction for the specs of course

Do you necessarily need to run both CdC and Stellarium at the same time?

[SniffTheGlove]

Thanks for that. THe only problem I may envisage after that is possily Stellarium as it does use quite a bit of graphics processing but I still can't find any minimum specs for it anywhere. I may just email the devs and see what they say, unless anyone can point me in the right direction for the specs of course

My lappy (the Advent K200) also runs Stellarium when I am not using Sharpcap etc as if is difficult to keep swapping the display but I am in the process of getting an old 15tft to run dual display, so Stellarium on one screen and Sharpcap/APT on the other all off the K200. I know this will work as I did this until 6 months ago when the previous 15tft failed.

The lappy also runs my Infrared cam 24/7

[jfox61]

Do you necessarily need to run both CdC and Stellarium at the same time?

Didn't say I did;) Just wanted a system that would run the most graphics intense program I would use. I believe I may be wrong but that would be Stellarium. I've not really used CdC but once I get to grips with it, I would use that for producing starcharts. So, it may not even need to be put on the laptop. Stellarium I would use realtime whilst outside.

From the answers, it seems that the software will run on most machines less than 5 years old and with at least 1gb of ram and a dual core processor.

[dmahon]

You don't need a dual core, they will run on a single core Intel Atom N270.

[jfox61]

Looks like I may have cracked it. Just signed up to a site called Groupon. Got myself a 24 month contract for a HTC phone for £19 per month. I needed a new one anyway. Xbox 360 PS3 or a laptop free. Got a XBox and PS3 so it was a no brainer. The contract is a little over 50% of my current one but with internet and 2 times as much talk and txt entitlement win win really.