Laptop

[madkayaker]

OUCH! glad i only dropped the one at the job i was on a little bit.

 

[Archie]

Bet you were even more glad it lived up to the advertising claims!

 

[zzr1200]

OUCH! glad i only dropped the one at the job i was on a little bit.

Search for Toughbook on you tube, interesting vids

Ps . They are bl***y good laptops...good ioutside in the rain....

 

[madkayaker]

Why would you use one in the rain unless your van had been nicked (although my van is worth lots less than the laptop and does get lots of water in passenger foot well and head liner)

 

[zzr1200]

Why would you use one in the rain unless your van had been nicked (although my van is worth lots less than the laptop and does get lots of water in passenger foot well and head liner)

When you're re-programing plant control systems on building sites....

 

[madkayaker]

OK that explains it. I'm a sparky so when it get wet i go back in van. (don't want to rust)

 

[zzr1200]

OK that explains it. I'm a sparky so when it get wet i go back in van. (don't want to rust)

I'm generally trying to sort out a MEWP that one of our foreign brothers has screwed up...

 

[madkayaker]

keeps you buisy i bet. Plant on site has a very hard lifre

 

[MrFluffy]

Search for Toughbook on you tube, interesting vids

Ps . They are bl***y good laptops...good ioutside in the rain....

I work with laptops daily as part of my job, and Im often in server rooms with a serial cable plugged into my current one (which has recently knackered its needed serial port sigh, shopping time again soon) but I miss having a toughbook. I had a cf25 and left it on the roof of my car one day and drove off. A wagon behind me ran it over, and it still worked after.
I went to work a contract on a clients site and they were doubting this story, but they had some cf25's onsite, so i offered a test where we dropped one down two flights onto a concrete floor, and if it broke Id pay for it. I won
Next time its my money instead of a companies, Im going to buy another toughbook, after my asus managed 4 months before the plasma wires in the fancy widescreen display detached and it lost part of the display (allegedly rough handled, therefore not guaranteed), £160 for the panel alone and now its a year out of date, yet another doorstop for the collection...

If you strip a panasonic toughbook, they have a mag alloy chassis, the hard disk inside is mounted in what looks like sillicon gel to protect it from shocks and they generally are built like tanks...

Having said that unless you NEED to be portable, throw in the van to take to client sites et, Id say get a desktop and replace the keyboard/mouse every few months when they get knackered, monitors are cheap if they get KIA too, you'll still be financially ahead of the game in a few years, and theyre nowhere near as fragile/stealable/looseable. Even if they get broke they can be brought back to life if theres something thats worth paying someones time to furtle it to recover the data...
If you get xp on it instead of the train wreck that is vista, id have thought that would improve your chances of running a cad package regardless of spec
I keep a desktop in the corner of my workshop, yes the keyboard gets hammered and full of crap as its next the grinder, but i always know where it is, I knew where it would be to run network cable and power to so no temporary cabling to trip over, and I leave it on perm and just turn the monitor off.

 

[madkayaker]

you could soon make a cage to stop it walking if you were done over don't over engineer it thew they will nick it instead of the MiG!

 

[rtbcomp]

......., monitors are cheap if they get KIA too,.......

CRT monitors are always cropping up on Freecycle

 

[dougcsv]

Hi all a newbie here so to be safe I thought I'd post about something not to do with Welding ;-) Computing used to be my business so I'm safer on this!!

Re: Laptops vs PCs etc. PCWorld are expensive - try ebuyer or DABS. Go for a big name esp for a laptop - Toshiba,HP & Acer I can recc. ;emachines i've no experience of but my gut tells me to avoid.

Avoid chain branded PCs like you get in Dixons. You can always get a sep monitor for the Laptop as well as the keyboard and mouse. Dust is a killer on either PC's or Laptops - not always poss or easy to clean.

You need to get 2gb RAM to be on the safe side - 1GB is an absolute min for Vista. I would say 1gb plus Vista plus Autocad might be a tad slow. That said memory is really cheap so as long as there is space to chuck in another stick you should be ok.
Processor Speed shouldn't be an issue unless you are going to play games or do massive cad/cam stuff. If it is for basic number crunching invoices, internet etc. then virtually anything will be fine.
There are some good small format PCs which you could consider to be portable, but the things they give away with the broadband packages that I've seen are really only good for internet access (IMHO). If you have a phone line into the workshop you would prob find it cheaper just to get BB on that - and a lot faster too.

Cheers.

 

[mileshc]

Hello Doug!, eMachines are awful in my experience, former Computer fiddler too.

I have used in the recent past the following companies to purchase on behalf of other erm.. companies(& myself), that did not need or want to spend too much & did not mind if there might be a scratch or two. Full warranties.

http://www.tier1.com/ refurbs with warranty & ex-corporate. Bought refurb & ex-corporate notebooks personally.

http://itcsales.co.uk/ Graded stock, cancelled orders etc.. Bought two DELL N-series this year(no OS, using Linux), last year about 15 but with XP & monitors etc, all with 3 year on-site warranty.

There are others of course, but generally these two have been very good.