Talk to me about 2nd hand garage laptops...........

[lchris21]

Looking to buy a 2nd hand laptop for garage use only. Missus is fed up with oily finger marks on the "house" laptop after I've nicked it to look up something

Will be using it mainly for looking up info on the web, youtube, pictures, bit of music maybe??? Will be running some Mach3 software on it as well which is currently running on a Win7 desktop, so will transfer that on to it also??

Not really looking for a mega size screen 14-15"??? will be fine. Something that can take a few oily rags without throwing a wobbly, and needs to be black, so no trendy bright pink colors........I can pretend there are no finger marks on it then.......

Any suggestions on what processor, ram, memory etc to look for???

got a mahoosive £75 to spend on one. Plenty around that well known auction site in this price bracket, but the choice is bewildering, as I know very little about stuff like this any guidance would be great

thanks

 

[CompoSimmonite]

I've got my old desktop in the loft ready for when I build my new workshop. Accepted they take up more room but you can then have a flat monitor on the wall, desk unit on a shelf (mine is going in a cupboard to avoid dust), cordless mouse & keyboard.

 

[MattH]

Regarding running Mach3 do you have an external motion control board? If you don't then running Mach3 on a laptop is a bad idea as the motion timing gets screwed up by all the hardware power saving built into laptops.

If you have an external motion controller such as an ESS, CSMIO etc then it is fine but you need to disable as much of the power saving as possible.

 

[gaz1]

you can buy them newish at laptops direct for what price that you would pay on ebay

look for refurbished units

119.00 for a laptop

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/st/refurbished-laptops?&cnt=300&isort=price

 

[Pete.]

Looking to buy a 2nd hand laptop for garage use only. Missus is fed up with oily finger marks on the "house" laptop after I've nicked it to look up something

Will be using it mainly for looking up info on the web, youtube, pictures, bit of music maybe??? Will be running some Mach3 software on it as well which is currently running on a Win7 desktop, so will transfer that on to it also??

Not really looking for a mega size screen 14-15"??? will be fine. Something that can take a few oily rags without throwing a wobbly, and needs to be black, so no trendy bright pink colors........I can pretend there are no finger marks on it then.......

Any suggestions on what processor, ram, memory etc to look for???

got a mahoosive £75 to spend on one. Plenty around that well known auction site in this price bracket, but the choice is bewildering, as I know very little about stuff like this any guidance would be great

thanks

Find another £75 and buy an elitebook. Loads on eBay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_EliteBook

 

[Chris Stevens]

Looking to buy a 2nd hand laptop for garage use only. Missus is fed up with oily finger marks on the "house" laptop after I've nicked it to look up something

Will be using it mainly for looking up info on the web, youtube, pictures, bit of music maybe??? Will be running some Mach3 software on it as well which is currently running on a Win7 desktop, so will transfer that on to it also??

Not really looking for a mega size screen 14-15"??? will be fine. Something that can take a few oily rags without throwing a wobbly, and needs to be black, so no trendy bright pink colors........I can pretend there are no finger marks on it then.......

Any suggestions on what processor, ram, memory etc to look for???

got a mahoosive £75 to spend on one. Plenty around that well known auction site in this price bracket, but the choice is bewildering, as I know very little about stuff like this any guidance would be great

thanks

Dell Precision would be ideal. Bought an old one for £20 last year, and while its old if you bin awful MS operating system and run Linux, it will still work fine for all you want, and you can still run Windoze dual boot, if you need MS for any reason.

 

[Luke]

I used to run old desktops in the garage. All typically bought for 40 - 50 quid woth a monitor from ebay and killed by grinding dust in 1 - 2 years.

I recently bought an HP fanless SSD based machine including windows 8/10 and will see how that gets on.

Mainly used for music, looking at this forum, ordering bits on ebay and looking up datasheets, drawings, etc.

 

[pedrobedro]

A few Christmas' ago we went out to collect holly and I found a Roma 1001 Advent laptop dumped in a hedge bottom. It has no battery and a couple of keys missing but I took it home to see if anything could be salvaged for eBay purposes. After all the wildlife and water were out of it I left it beside the boiler and forgot all about it. A month later I took it out and removed the hard drive and memory then I found an adaptor and plugged it into power it and the screen lit up, bonus. I decided to put the HDD and memory back in and plugged it in again and it came up with "Do you want to repair windows ?" I tried the recovery option but it was password protected so I put Xubuntu on it and I'm still using it now. I got a couple of replacement keys on eBay for 99p each but I never bothered with a battery just run it off the adaptor/charger.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

I got a friend a 2 year old lap top from a games exchange shop.
Had win 8 on it, but it was only £100.
Does what he needs and at that price it goes wrong junk it.

 

[Shedendman]

Local scrappys to me has a contract to take all the schools old lappys when they upgrade,he then sells them on for a tenner each but in bulk 20-30 at a time,no HDD,just RAM and Cd drive,they're nothing fancy either,managed to get one for the nextdoor neighbours kids, new 250GB Hdd £16,stuck linux on it works a treat,cant go wrong for £26

 

[lchris21]

Regarding running Mach3 do you have an external motion control board? If you don't then running Mach3 on a laptop is a bad idea as the motion timing gets screwed up by all the hardware power saving built into laptops.

If you have an external motion controller such as an ESS, CSMIO etc then it is fine but you need to disable as much of the power saving as possible.

no idea??? I got a mate working on the machine that'll be using it at the moment???? he seems to think a laptop will be fine to run it??

Quite a few suggestions here, I'll look into them..............

Forgot to mention I also run VCDS on the home laptop, so that will be moved over as well???

 

[AndyStobbs]

Just don't buy a Toshiba. Got a pile of them building up with motherboard failure.

 

[WorkshopChris]

Regarding running Mach3 do you have an external motion control board? If you don't then running Mach3 on a laptop is a bad idea as the motion timing gets screwed up by all the hardware power saving built into laptops.

If you have an external motion controller such as an ESS, CSMIO etc then it is fine but you need to disable as much of the power saving as possible.

I would second that cnc and laptops are not often best partners. You might get away with it if you run software in a second login with a minimum install with all the power saving options off and disconnected from internet with wifi turned off.

 

[premmington]

I am in the motortrade, I have always used secondhand Panasonic Toughbooks for workshop use.

Computing power is not the issue here.

It is being able to read the screen in sunlight.

Toughbook screens are designed for this!

 

[MattH]

no idea??? I got a mate working on the machine that'll be using it at the moment???? he seems to think a laptop will be fine to run it??

Quite a few suggestions here, I'll look into them..............

Forgot to mention I also run VCDS on the home laptop, so that will be moved over as well???

I would recommend that you get some clarification before you commit any money to this. I have been using Mach3 for 12 years and to me putting it on a laptop is a no no (unless you have a USB or Ethernet motion controller).
Inbuilt parallel ports on laptops rarely work correctly with Mach3 and additional external parallel ports (USB, pcmcia etc) outright will not work.

As said if you have an external motion controller I.e. CSMIO, KFlop, UC100, ESS etc then you will be fine. But if you are using a simple parallel breakout board you will struggle 99% of the time.

Mach support post FYI: http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=5981.0

 

[julianf]

I would strongly suggest a desktop.

Laptops are fine if you want to move them about, but, if its just connected to a cnc machine, you will find that, in time, the keyboard fills up with grime, the damp gets to it, etc.etc.

Just get a desktop, and be able to replace the keyboard for a couple of quid, rather than...

(i dont know how many keyboard i go through a year, but its more than one.... )

 

[Shedendman]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Clear-Uni...263819?hash=item35ebdafc0b:g:G40AAOSwl8NVeWyZ

 

[T0rnado69]

i used to use my laptop down the garage, until i found the cold kills the battery.

much better with an old desktop, but you need to make sure it has good filters to keep out dust, if your grinding etc.

or as my neighbour does, covers it over with a towel when he aint using it lol

 

[ukracer]

Just don't buy a Toshiba. Got a pile of them building up with motherboard failure.

Yeah do not get a DV6 they overheat. ....

 

[the snooper]

Just don't buy a Toshiba. Got a pile of them building up with motherboard failure.

I've had no problems with Toshiba at all been great machines but had dead acer's