Thread: laptop for MSV2

Hi Bob. If you were planning to mount the laptop in the vehicle at all I'd be suggesting a 'netbook' as opposed to a larger notebook or laptop. Very good specs, usually less than 10" screens and great battery life is the bare bones idea of a netbook. Do a search on Dick Smith for them and you'll be able to compare.

My Dad just replaced his 3 or 4 year old Dell with a Toshiba notebook - the gist of his research was that for sub-$1000 you can buy a machine with at least 500GB of storage and 6GB RAM and around 12" screen.

I'll be talking to him later today and I'll ask him where he bought it for you or if there were other recommendations he has following his purchase.

Originally Posted by bell1975

Hi Bob.

My Dad just replaced his 3 or 4 year old Dell with a Toshiba notebook - the gist of his research was that for sub-$1000 you can buy a machine with at least 500GB of storage and 6GB RAM and around 12" screen.

I'll be talking to him later today and I'll ask him where he bought it for you or if there were other recommendations he has following his purchase.

Ducked over to Dick Smith's and found a Toshiba notebook on special, the young fella there was really helpful, without being pushy [unlike Scurvy Jawmans, where they tried to convince me to spend much more than the sale price of their laptop]The young bloke very patiently explained the ins @ outs of the machine, and confirmed your dad's research. Have a bit more looking to do, but leaning towards this notebook. Thanks for the info, Bob.

Hi Bob

I have a collection of netbooks that I use for various tasks, and a couple dedicated to my cars for running FaultMate Vehicle Explorer (VE), EAS Unlock (for the P38) and reference materials such as RAVE.

Most netbooks will give you 1GB of memory, some variant of the Atom processor, and at least 160GB hard drive, plus 2 or 3 USB ports. All, I have or have seen, have WiFi and some have bluetooth.

A netbook running Windows XP is the ideal machine for VE, such as my old Samsung N130 and N150. However, most netbooks now run Windows 7 Starter or Android. Stay away from Android as it won't run VE. Windows 7 is ok but has a lot more processor and memory overhead than XP. My Dell Mini runs like a dog with Windows 7, but my Acer Aspire One D255E is quite ok.

OfficeWorks has these Acers quite reasonably priced at the moment. I know as I am building one for a customer in PNG who has bought a MSV-2 and netbook bundle from me.

Hope this helps.

Chers, Paul.