Am I stupid of thinking for thinking of a laptop?
 

Essentially I want a laptop so I can:

1. Tune MS, when the time comes.
2. Easily handle Race Render for combining video/data, preferably while at the track so I can study Sat night for the next day, when visiting unfamiliar tracks.
3. Hook up to a decent setup to play IRacing.


Will I need to spend stupid money on computer that will easily handle all 3?

Amazing title, would read again.

Excellent work on my part. FFS

I wouldn't say so, you can get a decent laptop to run iracing under a grand if you want serious graphics you could spend a little more.

Getting a laptop for #3 will make it heavier and more power-hungry than you would want for #1 and #2, but if you can live with a big hot laptop that needs to be plugged in a lot, you will be fine.

I'd go with the Lenovo Y series, nice graphics card for a decent price. Mine had a shit screen though (1300x768 or something) so you may want to get another monitor to plug it into for gaming.

That's a good point, hmmm. Maybe with some small upgrades the current computer could handle IRacing then just buy a laptop for #1 #2

Exactly this. What you want is two different machines, and you could probably get both machines for less than the price of one gaming capable laptop.

I recommend, an overstocked or older model year netbook that runs win XP/vista/7. You can typically find those for less than $200 shipped in new or refubished condition. This IS what you want for tuning, imo. Big 16" + laptops suck inside a miata.

For the gaming end of things, if you are even remotely tech savvy build a PC. You can build a DAMN nice machine these days for less than $600 if you have your own monitor and case already. A computer is very basic and consists of :

Case/power supply
Motherboard
CPU/heatsink/fan
RAM
Video card
HDD
CD/DVD drive
case fans

misc sata cables and whatnot to make it all work. And its fun as hell to build!

So if done right you could have a badass gaming rig AND a tuning/web surfing laptop for <$800.

If you WERE able to find a laptop capable of gaming for that price, it would be compromised in one way or another.

Yeah, we have an HTPC in the living room now that I built 3.5 years ago.

I don't remember the exact specs on it, but it was fairly beastly at the time.

For logging/tuning you want as small and easy to use as possible. Trust me.

As already mentioned, don't combine #1 and 2 with #3. #3 should be done on a pc or another laptop that you won't be lugging around with you everywhere. Big heavy bulky laptops get annoying when tuning.

One thing I would recommend for the tuning laptop is a touch screen. Tunerstudio isn't exactly optimized for touch, but when you're in the car it's 10000x quicker than using the touchpad. It's gonna be pricey-er than a netbook, but there are deals to be had (Like this, $400 for a 14" touch screen i3). I got one with an i5, 6gb ram, and touchscreen for ~$550.

I couldn't have reset my timing back to 'use table' from fixed to 10° while on the interstate with a touchpad.

Good point, lol. But why... why did you have to do that?

I'd second the ideapad y series, my fiance got one and plays plenty of games on it and the battery life isn't too bad. Plus the accident protection they have is *worth* it.

Forgot to put it back after checking the base timing with a light.

Ahh yip. That'll do it. Ask the guy that drove his car hundreds of miles like that and was asking why his manifold was glowing :bowrofl:

Didn't you melt your BMC too? lol :D

I was planning on getting a laptop with the Black Friday deals, so this is well timed! I will be following this thread for advice as well.

The Dell Venue Pro is 8" touch with Windows 8.1 Pro. MicroUSB so will run TunerstudioMS and connect. I've seen them as low as $259 (Microcenter).

Hard to beat the price or what is and can do. Only big drawback (for me) is a lack of HDMI output.

Will you be able to run Tunerstudio on an 8" screen? IDK how swing or whatever Java framework TS is coded in handles small screens, but I've had problems with plenty of apps on my 9" netbook. Devs are lazy, and if they don't think a window will need a scroll bar they won't put one in. Which results in part of the application being outside the screen area.

Basically I wouldn't buy an 8" tablet expecting it to work as a laptop, even if it runs full winblows 8.

Well I don't know. The screen is certainly small and I agree with you on using it as a laptop. Way too small to be any kind of productive with software not written for a touch interface.

The issue with netbooks was really because the drivers for the screen resolution never matched with what Windows wanted. And so some apps had the bottom part of the window missing or dialog boxes were missing buttons. A real pain for sure and why my netbook got relegated to a supporting role.

Tunerstudio runs fine on the netbook resolution and also runs fine on my Samsung Ativ 11" tablet which runs 8.1 at the moment but I must admit I don't like the windows touch interface anyway.

Kind of like typing this on my phone... Painful

Not a Windows driver issue, literally the first thing I did when I got my netbook was to replace XP with Ubuntu.