How important is the laptop?

[JamesF]

I'll happily second the idea of refurb kit.  I use it in my observatory without any problems.  I also have a refurb HP Elitebook that I bought over six years ago that is still going strong and was still in daily use by my wife for work until the end of lockdown (I was pleased enough with it that I bought another for me for use outside my office a couple of years ago).

One thing you may need to be careful about with laptops is that they have a UK keyboard layout.  I've seen one or two that have the US layout.  Personally I don't get too fussed about that as I spent a good few years in the 90's switching between US and UK keyboards every day, to the point where my brain just handled the change without me thinking about it, but it might be a pain otherwise.

James

[nephilim]

10 minutes ago, groberts said:

FWIW I got a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad 500G SSD (really good & fast) + 16GB RAM x 2USB2 & x2 USB3 ports + Windows 10 Pro for just over £400 recently from MicroDream, which has turned out very well for astrophotpgraphy control, capture etc. 

www.microdream.co.uk   

Thanks very much for the link mate, i'll have a look now 🙂

[nephilim]

10 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I'll happily second the idea of refurb kit.  I use it in my observatory without any problems.  I also have a refurb HP Elitebook that I bought over six years ago that is still going strong and was still in daily use by my wife for work until the end of lockdown (I was pleased enough with it that I bought another for me for use outside my office a couple of years ago).

One thing you may need to be careful about with laptops is that they have a UK keyboard layout.  I've seen one or two that have the US layout.  Personally I don't get too fussed about that as I spent a good few years in the 90's switching between US and UK keyboards every day, to the point where my brain just handled the change without me thinking about it, but it might be a pain otherwise.

James

Thanks James,
Thats a good point I would never have thought of. I'm pretty efficient on the keyboard so a US one really would be like starting from scratch with the typing 😬

Edited October 26, 2020 by nephilim

[Viktiste]

Definitely agree with the suggestions to look for a used one. 

£450 sound way more money than necessary on a mount PC.  For NINA, as long as the PC runs Win10 64 bit and has 4+ GB ram you are good.

Avoid the Celeron processor, go for an I3, I5 or better, all will work.

[nephilim]

3 minutes ago, Viktiste said:

Definitely agree with the suggestions to look for a used one. 

£450 sound way more money than necessary on a mount PC.  For NINA, as long as the PC runs Win10 64 bit and has 4+ GB ram you are good.

Avoid the Celeron processor, go for an I3, I5 or better, all will work.

Cheers mate. Yes im going for refurbished, i3/i5 with USB3 & now looking at a budget of £300 ish. 🙂

[Viktiste]

Here the spec on my mount PC:

A Dell Inspiron 7720, probably released around 2012. Bought it for about £180,- Runs NINA and anything else I need at the mount, no issues.

[nephilim]

4 minutes ago, Viktiste said:

Here the spec on my mount PC:

A Dell Inspiron 7720, probably released around 2012. Bought it for about £180,- Runs NINA and anything else I need at the mount, no issues.

Thats good to know, cheers mate. With the money I'll save from buying a refurbished one I can now put towards a higher end camera 😃

[Nigella Bryant]

Quote

 

I bought a 1tb, 8gb mini pc new for £220. 4usb3, 2coms and lan, also hdmi, etc, etc for my obsy. Really fast and so small.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Nigella Bryant
pic added

[Viktiste]

That's a bargain 😃

[nephilim]

1 hour ago, Nigella Bryant said:

I bought a 1tb, 8gb mini pc new for £220. 4usb3, 2coms and lan, also hdmi, etc, etc for my obsy. Really fast and so small.

I'll have to go the laptop route as my setup needs to be portable as I've  access to some good dark skies where I live in the Lake District so a mini pc wouldnt work for me. That is a good price though 🙂

[nephilim]

19 hours ago, smashing said:

I bought a refurbished lenovo laptop from eBay for £180ish which is small, has an i5 processor and 256gb SSD which obviously runs everything I need and much more.

Processing images is done on a beefier laptop but that's another discussion entirely.

Im going for a refurbished laptop now (thanks to a fellow SGL member for mentioning to me) which will save a fair bit of cash.
My image processing will be done at home on my desktop PC which will easily eat anything I throw at it 😃

[gaz81]

Another thing to consider with being in the dark using a laptop.... a backlit keyboard. 
 

My HP Elitebook 820 didn’t have one, but being a business class machine I bought one for £20 and fitted it myself (couple weeks ago in fact). 

[nephilim]

4 hours ago, gaz81 said:

Another thing to consider with being in the dark using a laptop.... a backlit keyboard. 
 

My HP Elitebook 820 didn’t have one, but being a business class machine I bought one for £20 and fitted it myself (couple weeks ago in fact). 

Doesn't that affect your night vision (unless its red) ? Mine goes at even a hint of non red light if its close by. My desktop is backlit & is like Blackpool illuminations if I have the lights off 😂. 

[nephilim]

So, I bought this refurbished laptop. Win 10 64bit. i5 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 2x USB 3.0 one of which is for charging & 1 x USB-C all for £263. That should be good enough for everything i'll need it for hopefully. https://www.cnet.com/products/hp-probook-640-g2-14-core-i5-6200u-8-gb-ram-256-gb-ssd/

Edited November 4, 2020 by nephilim

[BrendanC]

Top tip: you can replace the optical drive in that machine with a HDD (or even another SSD) in a caddy. Works very well and replaces something pretty much redundant nowadays with something useful ie more storage on board, particularly useful if taking large video captures for planetary imaging. 

[tooth_dr]

On 27/10/2020 at 02:10, Nigella Bryant said:

I bought a 1tb, 8gb mini pc new for £220. 4usb3, 2coms and lan, also hdmi, etc, etc for my obsy. Really fast and so small.

Hi Nigella. Sorry I may have missed where you posted this. Have you a link to the thread?

[nephilim]

3 hours ago, BrendanC said:

Top tip: you can replace the optical drive in that machine with a HDD (or even another SSD) in a caddy. Works very well and replaces something pretty much redundant nowadays with something useful ie more storage on board, particularly useful if taking large video captures for planetary imaging. 

That's a really good idea thanks.

[nephilim]

Laptop arrived today, considering its a refurbished model it's in like new condition. i5, 8GB Ram, NVMe SSD, 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C. All for £263 after promotion discount, very happy with that 😁 

[gaz81]

Nice!

[edarter]

That laptop should do it nicely

Edited November 7, 2020 by edarter

[nephilim]

4 hours ago, edarter said:

That laptop should do it nicely

Thanks mate, I was surprised at how cheap refurbished laptops are,