laptop for imaging help

[dogfish]

Hi All

I'm going to buy myself a laptop in the next few days. It'll be for general use (surfing the internet through a wireless broadband connection, writing reports, making presentations, etc.) but I also plan to use it eventually for imaging. My imaging plans include a webcam initially and then probably a DSLR, but possibly a CCD. My question is, are there any features that I must have for imaging purposes? I'm guessing lots of hard disk space (what size is unlikely to cause me any major storage headaches?), USB 2.0 ports (lots I'm guessing but what about a USB hub/splitter?), does it need a parallel port, and would you go for vista or winXP?

My brother has suggested this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128981 (I'm a cheapskate). Would this suit most astrophotography purposes. I really don't want to buy something that is not up to the job and would rather wait a bit longer and save up for one that's suited to this purpose.

Many thanks for your help.

Martin

[SteveL]

parallel port - not usually required

USB ports - LOTS OF THEM!

Vista vs XP - personal taste here, but I`ll use XP until M$ force my XP keys out of my cold dead hands... (or they fix vista).

[Kai]

I have heard that alot of the computer manufacturers are offering to upgrade Vista to Xp now

Personally i would plump for Xp rather than Vista as i havent heard anything good about it.

[Jeff RV]

Vista vs XP - personal taste here, but I`ll use XP until M$ force my XP keys out of my cold dead hands... (or they fix vista).

Make you right, I have nothing but agro with my Vista laptop.

Jeff.

[MikeP]

I set up a machine for a neighbour that had Vista installed. I could not see what advantages it had over XP .... but I could certainly see the disadvantages. I'm with Steve on this - XP Pro till I am forced to upgrade.

By the way, my laptop only has 2 USB ports. I bought a 4 way USB multiport off eBay for just over £4 (so I now have 5 ports) and it works a treat.

Mike

[dogfish]

Thanks for the replies. So XP gets the vote then and only 2 USB ports will be ok if I get a hub. Anything wrong with the one I linked to? Otherwise I'm probably going to buy it tomorrow.

Cheers, martin

[Jeff RV]

What about a fireWire port would that be a good idea? although you can add this later it may be handy if you want to use a fireWire camera in the future.

Jeff.

[cygnusx1]

A serial port may also be handy if you wish to autoguide, save you getting a usb-serial adapter.

[MikeP]

Martin,

Looks good value for money to me.

Just as a warning though - I did have a hard time with eBuyer when something I bought from them was faulty. It took quite a long time to go through the process and there was no mechanism for contacting a human there - well, none that worked. In the end they did replace the item with no quibbles, so I would do business with them again.

If you do buy it, could you PM me and let me know how it works out please? My mum and dad (in their late 70,s and early 80's) have decided they want a PC - it may be OK for them.

Mike

[dogfish]

Will do Mike. I'll wait overnight to see if there are any more opinions before ordering, then go for it.

Martin

[Starflyer]

Martin,

Looks good value for money to me.

Just as a warning though - I did have a hard time with eBuyer when something I bought from them was faulty. It took quite a long time to go through the process and there was no mechanism for contacting a human there - well, none that worked. In the end they did replace the item with no quibbles, so I would do business with them again.

If you do buy it, could you PM me and let me know how it works out please? My mum and dad (in their late 70,s and early 80's) have decided they want a PC - it may be OK for them.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I bought one of these a few weeks ago mainly for imaging and I'm very happy with it, with £50 cashback it's a steal. Twas I who recommended this lappy to Dogfish

Positives: It's quite light, has a nice screen, for a (very) cheap laptop it's fairly fast, a gig of ram is always handy as a minimum these days, it comes with XP Pro installed so you don't need to worry about upgrading from Vista. and it's quiet.

The only negatives are: No media supplied - you need to create your own restore disks. It came pre-infected with Norton security suite and a trial of office 2007 installed, so the first job, after creating the restore images was to clean those nasties off

Happily running AVG free AV, Commodo free firewall and good old Office 2003.

It's my first HP lappy so I can't comment on reliability, but we have a few HP machines here in the office and they have been very well behaved - touch wood

Hope this helps,

Ian