Netbook for imaging

[KentDave]

Hi All,

Having had a great time finding things through my scope I have decided i'd really like to try and get some images.

Given that my laptop is getting on a bit I wanted something more portable to use with a webcam, and I shall also be buying a motor for the EQ2 mount for my Skywatcher 130P.

Does anyone have any recommendations as for which netbook I should go for?

Any other advice for getting started with imaging would also be appreciated!

Thanks, Dave.

[Altair]

Hi i have been using a netbook when imaging but found the screen too small to show all of registax when i tried stacking the images.. the buttons on screen are quite low in the programme on some of the screenshots. I was wondering why i couldnt seem to complete the stacking process! Yes it was fine to use when doing the imaging but really think a bigger screen makes it easier to stack your images..my netbook is a advent 4211c i am sure now you can get slightly larger screens than the one i am i using ..

[Dazzio]

I'd personally go for a notebook over an netbook. Just because of it's size comparison. But netbook wise, I've never heard a serious complaint about the Asus EEepc. I'd personally tend to stay away from Dells as I've had a few bad run ins with them. I know Samsung have a decent one out now, but the name escapes me ATM...

If you see one you like the look of, throw up the spec on here and I'm sure we'll be able to help you.

Dazz

[samtheeagle]

I use an Asus EeePC 901 when I'm capturing images. It works great, more than enough to handle PHD for autoguiding and APT for image capture. I find the small form factor perfect as I've got quite enough kit to lug about already! The screen is more than adequate for focusing and reviewing the images as they come in. Also the 901 has fantastic battery life, at least 4 hours, I've never had issues with it running out on me yet.

So long as you're thinking of a netbook just for out in the field they're great, but I wouldn't really consider one for processing your image data. When I get home I copy everything to my desktop...

[malc-c]

I have a two year old Asus Eee 900A netbook, with an upgraded 16GB Runcorn SSD. It's fine for most things, but found that runnng Stellarium is impossible. I capture to a fast SD card and then do the processing on a dual core Pentium machine afterward. If you want to process images then opt for a notebook rather than netbook, these little Atom processors struggle a bit unless you have one with a dedicated graphics chip..

[Dazzio]

I have a two year old Asus Eee 900A netbook, with an upgraded 16GB Runcorn SSD.

Did you have an mechanical drive in it before hand? If so, how does the battery life compare?

Dazz

[malc-c]

Dazz, No it had an 8GB SSD, which was really slow. I purchased the Runcorn 16GB for around £65. Most of the 90x series came with SSD's rather than 2.5" HDD's

[nightfisher]

i use my ibm T40 notebook, very light and compact and great reliability saying that my one packed up a few months back but i was able to get it repaired, the southbridge chip came away from the mobo!

you can pick these up second user for about £140 with decent spec

[Stephen]

As above, I wouldn't recommend a netbook for general use. I've got one coming next month and it's solely for taking the images and controlling the camera.

All processing will be done a machine more up to the task (Macbook) in the house.

For the imaging you want as big a HDD as you can afford, at least 1GB of memory and away you go. Check out fleaBay for last years or the years before models.

Just my 2p

[Helen]

I've got a netbook Samsung NC10 that I use for capture with the webcam. Its light enough to hold in your one hand and has a great battery life. Its not the quickest at processing, but I do use registax on it (but expect to have to wait a bit).

Helen

[Dazzio]

Dazz, No it had an 8GB SSD, which was really slow. I purchased the Runcorn 16GB for around £65. Most of the 90x series came with SSD's rather than 2.5" HDD's

I thought so when I posted, I must be getting confused with the 1000 series or something else entirely.

I reckon a netbook could do the processing, but it'll take a fair amount of time. Now if Registax got re-worked to run off the GPU, you'd get it done really fast.

Dazz

[AndyUK]

I managed to get a little netbook on the back of my work dongle contract (an extra £5 / month for 2 yrs )- I initially intend to use it for data acquisition (ie webcam or with APT), but hope to use it with EQMOD one day (and maybe use it for guiding although I currently have a Synguider).

One thing worth watching out for though is the screen resolution - Some netbooks come with lower res screens and some apps won't install (as they check the screen res). It's not insurmountable as you can attach it to another monitor, but it's worth noting. (Oh, and also that some apps subsequently have a scroll bar...)

Bizarrely the netbook I have (a Packard Bell Dot S model), came with Photoshop Elements 8, but with only 1Gb of RAM (upgradeable to a massive 2Gb!), it runs like a 2 legged horse at Kempton...

[dmahon]

I have a reather old Dell Mini9, ordered for its tiny size, which I use for data aquisition. It runs CdC, PHD, APT and EQMOD all at once. It will run Maxim, but I haven't got to grips with that. It runs Stellarium.

It sits in the garage, connected by a long USB cable to the mount. I control it remotely with VNC over a wireless network, so I can sit in the house.

My only complaint it that is has 1GB or RAM and a small hard drive. I have just ordered upgrades for both.

[KentDave]

Thanks for all the replies and advice. I recieved an Asus EeePC 1015PEM in the post today, which I am very impresed with. Also got my flashed SPC880 webcam today too, so I am ready to go!

Have installed Stellarium, sharpcap and registax already which all seem fine, although I expect to use registax on my desktop more often than not.

Thanks again, now........where's Saturn got to?

[Glider]

Another vote for samsung NC10. There is a driver upgrade to get the screen resolution to 1024x768.

I run Registax and Stellarium amongst others.

[Psychobilly]

I bought my Samsung NC10 when Asda were selling them off cheap... with its 160 GB HDD plenty of room for video capture fromthe DMK... I upgraded it to 2GB of ram.. sorted

[Dazzio]

I'm checking out the Samsung NC10 myself. Looks like a handy little bit of kit, capable of running windows 7 apparently. You can get them for about £100 ish on eBay. I want a blue one

Dazz

[Steep]

Stick with XP on it, Win7 is too resource hungry for netbooks.

[CGolder]

Lies :-) window seven runs way faster on my netbook than xp ever did :-)

Sent from my ZTE-RACER using Tapatalk

[Spikey]

I use an IBM x100 running Windows 7 to capture via an SPC880 using SharpCap.

I then transfer the .avi to my desktop machine running Vista 64bit, stack it and do some post processing.

I've used Win 7 to set up the SPC, flash it with the custom firmware and capture the images, it's never been near Win XP.

[Steep]

I've swapped back and forth between XP and Win7 on my Lenovo (2gb/160gb) and XP is way smoother running programs like Stellarium. Win7 runs fine, there's just fewer resources available to run programs.

[malc-c]

Funny, W7 runs fine on my 900A - but with just a 16GB HDD, there isn't much (4GB) headroom left. Did run a distro of linux on it once (gnome I think it was called) and it flew - almost instantaneous when opening apps... trouble was not a lot of apps would work on it, and I was too use to installing the windows way rather than fuffing about in linux !

[PeterW]

Win7 starter on my n140 works fine, 259gb hard drive allows me to acquire rather too much solar and lunar vies for processing. The desktop can then chew though them... Still takes a while. As for the limited screen size I got a copy if gimespace desktop extender, allows you to scroll a larger area, not ideal, but stops those jiggles where the button you want is off the bottom of the screen.

Cheers

PEterW

[Dazzio]

I'd personally stick with XP due to the fact that most astro related programs run best on the legacy stuff. For people who have small hard drives, I do have a gamers version of XP that takes a lot of the useless stuff out. The instalation file is about 300mb to 400 mb iirc. I'm sure I'll be able to find a gamers version of Vista or 7 just gotta look on PirateBay or RapidShare.

Dazz