Laptop suitability for controlling multiple apps

[2manytrees]

I've been using a fairly old HP laptop for my astrophoto work;  a Probook 640 G2, with 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive.  So far it has just been running ASI Studio and SharpCap, for photo work and polar aligning; but I am now looking at adding  ASCOM and EQMOD platforms to it, to run an HEQ5 Pro mount.

I find it difficult to assess how well the laptop will handle the new software when all is in action. It does have some other programs on it, but these are not in use when AP is being done. The laptop has two USB ports; one would be occupied by the main camera and the other by the ASCOM connector.  Would this laptop be able to handle all the tasks involved with ASCOM and general image capture? Or am I possibly looking at acquiring another laptop?

Just a couple of other things; when installing ASCOM does the laptop need to be connected to the powered mount beforehand? and would a powered usb hub be of benefit?

[Swoop1]

I have been using a fairly crusty Lenovo Thinkpad that was donated by my son (who scavanged it from some office detritus when it was being "recycled").

I used it for the following when imaging-

Camera control (ZWO ASI Studio or Sony Imaging Edge)

Mount control (Green Swamp Server/ Cartes du Ciel)

Guiding (Not very succesfuly but that was meatware as opposed to hardware/ software issues)

Browsing the internet whilst waiting for an imaging run to finish.

I would have the following connections-

Main camera USB

Guide Camera USB

EQMOD cable usb to mount.

That was 3 USB ports which will leave you one shy if you are going to guide. 

I didn't use a USB hub so don't know how this will affect your speeds. My speeds were OK generally but sometimes the concurrent activity browsing was slower than I would like.

[Swoop1]

One other comment- I found booting up annoyingly slow after a while so my son replaced the hard drive with an SSD which vastly improved things.

[TiffsAndAstro]

Just for comparison I use an 8 year old MacBook pro with 2 usb c ports, one of which is taken by the macs power supply. Running win10 home unactivated via boot camp.

The solitary spare usb has a long   usbc to usb B (I think) into a powered (by usb from Mac only ATM but I can optionally plug in an external pus) 4 port usb hub mounted atop my main scope. Into that hub go both cameras and the mount.

I run synscan app, Nina and phd2 only while imaging. It's a 2 core 4 thread processor, 8gb ram and task manager says it barely uses 50% of the processors. I've also live stacked in siril on it and noticed no issues.

[adyj1]

3 hours ago, 2manytrees said:

I've been using a fairly old HP laptop for my astrophoto work;  a Probook 640 G2, with 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive

Would be useful to know the CPU spec to be able to compare like with like... 

You aren't doing anything particularly taxing, and adding ASCOM and EQMOD doesn't add a lot of overhead, so you should be ok. 

You can happily install ASCOM and all the ASCOM drivers for your kit (including EQMOD) without having any of your kit connected, but you won't know until you connect everything (and pick the correct USB/Com ports) that you'll know you have everything working. 

A USB hub is a common accessory for doing AP, so don't upgrade just because you don't have enough ports, but a general concensus is a powered hub should ideally be used if you are extending usb3 connections. 

HTH

Ady

Edited August 21 by adyj1

[2manytrees]

Thanks everyone for your replies; it seems on the whole that the computer should be ok for the jobs to come, so I just need to get that connecting-cable....