Very cheap ultimate tuning laptop
 

Fry's has new (not refurbed) Eee 900As on sale for $179. This is the 9" display model with 4G SSD and 512MB. Not a barn-burner, but more than enough for your ECU tuning software.

Edit: forgot the link: http://www.frys.com/product/5947064

i know they have USB, but do they have a PC-card/PCMCIA slot for using with non-fail-based serial adapters?

FWIW I have been using a cheap-ass rebranded Chinese USB adapter with the Adaptronic and so far so good.

It has PCIExpressMini.

However, just buy any USB adapter that uses the GUC232A chipset and there will be no fail. If you can manage to make one of those screw up, then you're a retard and it is probably dangerous for you to be using a computer.

that's an IOGear part number is what google tells me. I believe I have one of those at home in the miscellaneous hardware archive.

I find that the adaptronic is very finicky. I have to turn off my FIFO buffers to get it to update the firmware properly for example.

the GUC232A used to bluescreen my laptop when datalogging/autotuning with the hydra.

my retardation notwithstanding, the Quatech SSPR-100 has been flawless aside from the FIFO buffer issue mentioned above, but that's a minor and rare issue.

Joe,

I've seen FTDI adapters that worked perfectly well on other laptops fail on my BRAND NEW, formatted by me laptop. I'm not even going to bother talking about Pr****ic. On the other hand, my Oxford-chipset dual serial PCMCIA card hasn't failed me once.

Jim

Or you could get one of these:

Acer Aspire AS5515 Refurbished Notebook Computer - AMD Athlon 2650e 1.6GHz, 3GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.4" WXGA , Vista Home Basic RB-L-LX.AZN0Y.002 at CircuitCity.com

3 gig ram, 160 gig hd, 15.4inch screen. $299 with free shipping.

Bulky, oversized machines with Vista and moving hard drives are a dime a dozen.

sidebar: CircuitCity.com is still up?

Any ideas as to how well these do in cold (below freezing) or hot (> 90F) temperatures? The old laptop I've been using for tuning barely functions in either condition.