Laptop specification

[Expanse57]

Hi. 

I'm thinking of getting a secondhand laptop for general use, and since I would like to do some astrophotography in future, thought it would be useful to know the minimum spec it should have, if I wanted to set it up linked directly to a guided scope? Excuse my ignorance on this, so any general advice on the computer spec side of astrophotography would be welcome. 

Thank you 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Expanse57

[Clarkey]

Nothing special. A basic laptop with an SSD and USB 3 will be fine for deep sky or planetary. I use a very low powered mini PC for deep sky (with additional storage). For planetary, using faster download speeds I have a pentium gold with SSD. If you want it to run stacking and image processing, you will want something a bit better (the faster the PC the quicker the stacking / processing).

[drjolo]

SSD and USB3.0 will be good, and I suggest to avoid entry level CPU like Celeron or Atom. I have mini PC with N3350 processor and with running SGPro and PHD2 with multi star guiding it already reaches 100% CPU during the most of the time. Any i3 or i5 family CPU will be much better.

Edited January 29, 2023 by drjolo

[Expanse57]

Thanks Clarkey. I was looking at an old lenovo T430, refurbished with 16GB Ram and 512 GB SSD. i5 processor. It's a chunky laptop and I'd probably need to get a new battery. Not sure if this would be OK, speedwise. 

[Expanse57]

Thanks Drlojo. So, the t430 at least has the i5 cpu and SSD, but I suspect not the usb 3. Is the USB 3 a critical spec? 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I bought a used Dell Vostro 7th Gen with I5 CPU, 8 GB RAM USB3 and 256 GB SSD.  I use it for planetary imaging, EEVA and plate-solving and am quite pleased with its performance. It's quick.

Not so impressed with its physical design. The hinge mounts broke and I had to spend hours with a tiny screwdriver and Araldite trying to fix it. If you have the chance to try a slimline laptop before you buy, close the lid and see if the lid will free-fall the last 2cm. if it doesn't and feels stiff, avoid.

 

[Expanse57]

Actually, just checked another secondhand t430 we have, and it does seem to have two usb 3 ports, apparently they are blue and have a SS (superspeed) symbol. I shouldn't be surprised, since amazingly usb 3 ports came out in 2008 and the t430 in 2012. The refurbished ones are also significantly upgraded, wrt ram and hard drive, compared to original spec. 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Expanse57

[malc-c]

For doing the basics of controlling the mount, guiding and taking the images the PC doesn't have to be anything special.  I still use a Core2 Duo processor with 8GB of old DDDR3 Ram, with mechanical drives as the main observatory PC (it was a dinosaur back in 2011 when the observatory was built) - the processor is circa 2006 !).  But the processing is done on a modern Ryzen processor based machine (4 cores  8 processors) with 16GB DDR4 ram and a fast Nvme SSD main drive.