recommended laptop and software

[Trippen]

Hello all,
What type of laptop and software do you all use or recommend......Looking to buy just a tuning laptop...have a chance on getting a refurbished ibm t60 from work for cheap but it has xp professional on it. Any one use something similar to this?

[HermaN]

I just use a little ASUS 1005HA 10.1" netbook. Has a 1.6 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 160GB HDD running Windows XP Home. With a 9-cell battery it lasts around 9 hours, then the 3-cell one that came with it gives another 3 hours, so 12 hours of tuning time available.

To be honest, you do not need anything fancy or powerful for tuning. The most important thing is battery life! Get one with a very good battery, or one where you can buy a very good battery for it at least. I like the little 10.1" ASUS, not too small, light weight, does the job, only cost about £220 and has excellent battery life. Pretty much all you need really. Bought it specifically for tuning.

[PL]

I just use an old Toshiba laptop that I got off eBay cheap. The old Toshi's are totally bomb-proof machines. Mine's a Satellite 4300 which runs a mighty P3-650 processor and I think 256MB of RAM. Best part is that they'll run off 12V power from the car's cigarette lighter.

Don't get anything too nice cos they tend to get beaten around when used for tuning/diagnostic duties.

PL

[Trippen]

Just picked up this lap top fully refurbish for super cheap.....Ill let you all know how it does. Thanks guys for the inputs

Dell Latitude D410
Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 M Type: Netbook
Processor Speed: 1.8 GHz Screen Size: 12 inches
Processor Configuration: Single Core Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Memory (RAM): 2 GB Primary Drive: DVD+/-RW
Hard Drive Capacity: 250 GB

[guricha]

guys will nistune work on asus pc eee 2G ?
800 GHz
512 MB RAM

i wonder if it will work on this PC, wanted to install in my car as dashboard

[Preston]

Yes it works, I got an EEE PC specifically for tuning...I can fit it in my glovebox if needs be. The only thing is the screen res is only 1024x600 so it's hard to fit a lot of info, let alone see it if it's not close to you.

[guricha]

Yes it works, I got an EEE PC specifically for tuning...I can fit it in my glovebox if needs be. The only thing is the screen res is only 1024x600 so it's hard to fit a lot of info, let alone see it if it's not close to you.

thanks mate

[Trippen]

Just picked up this lap top fully refurbish for super cheap.....Ill let you all know how it does. Thanks guys for the inputs

Dell Latitude D410
Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 M Type: Netbook
Processor Speed: 1.8 GHz Screen Size: 12 inches
Processor Configuration: Single Core Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Memory (RAM): 2 GB Primary Drive: DVD+/-RW
Hard Drive Capacity: 250 GB

Lap top has been working great just thought i would update my thread..

[PL]

I think the key here is WinXP. It's only when you go to Vista or Win7 that the wheels come off. Stick with XP and everything is solid and fast. And you can run an old eBay laptop that was made 10 years ago - back when laptops were reliable too.

I've got an old Toshi 4300 and it gets an absolute thrashing every single day. Total reliability.

Yeah, I know I'm living in the past. But for the time being it's a very nice place to be!

PL

[Matt]

However most laptops these days are win7 so they must be supported. Doing driver update package atm along with crash investigation which occurs on these os pn disconnect. Main issue is visual studio 6 is not supported in vista/win7. If I upgrade to vs 2010 then all pcs using nistune must run .net 2.0 or higher and the app will run slower difficult situation microsoft has left us in

[PL]

That sucks big time. I guess if I had to run .net it'd kill my trusty old laptop. And all its brothers!

PL

[STATUS]

Toughbook i love mine and its so stable, i have not yet found a tuning suite it wont work with.... nice serial connection too.

[iaredam]

However most laptops these days are win7 so they must be supported. Doing driver update package atm along with crash investigation which occurs on these os pn disconnect. Main issue is visual studio 6 is not supported in vista/win7. If I upgrade to vs 2010 then all pcs using nistune must run .net 2.0 or higher and the app will run slower difficult situation microsoft has left us in

If you get Win 7 Pro you can run XP Mode with VS6 installed on the virtual machine. It probably won't help with trying to debug any problems that arise with connecting to the Nistune hardware though.

[Matt]

Yeah thats no good since the problems happen running under Vista/7 rather than XP specifically and I need hardware connected to debug

Anyway seems that VS6 still runs okay under Win7 even though not under Vista despite incompatibility problems reported by the OS

[guricha]

Toughbook i love mine and its so stable, i have not yet found a tuning suite it wont work with.... nice serial connection too.

me also:) think Toughbook and latitudes are best ones for tuning