Laptop for tuning
 

So I'm looking to pick up a laptop or netbook for tuning this weekend. Trying to decide quickly but not end up buying a fucking junk. I'll be getting it off ebay, used or maybe new depending on the price, but more than likely used.

I was thinking I'll also probably end up using it for work too. So I can list auctions from wherever and always have it with me in case I need to do something on the move.

What would you guys recommend? I was looking at ibooks just now and was thinking I might like to get one. Do any of you guys use a mac for tuning? Just looking for some pointers. Thanks guys :bigtu:

Is MS even compatible with a mac?

I'm using a Dell Latitude and love it. Its fairly large, and not too new, but I got it off cl for 200 and it has worked flawlessly and fast for 2 years now.
Wife uses it around the house since it has wifi internet and all the bells/whistles.

I say get something used but good brand. Better than buying brand new junk. Just my .02

It doesn't matter what I say. You'll wind up buying something that's the wrong machine for the job. Everyone always does...

Mac + bootcamp. I love my mac to death. I used to be a diehard PC guy but I finally saw the light. Don't let all the faggy trendy shit that's associated with macs steer you away either, it really is a great machine. Running a virtual machine in OSX I can flip between windows and OSX like nothing, or boot it up normally. The workflow is great too.

I'm on my gf's mac right now and I really like it. At home I use a dell desktop and its been pretty good to me, but I have come close to throwing it out a window on multiple occasions. This mac seems way smoother to me. I don't need anything lighting fast or with the most features, but not the bottom of the barrel either.

I want to hear anything anyone has to say. Good or bad, mac or pc.

What about an EeePC?? They are tiny which is good for tuning and being able to throw under the seat to log, but would not be a good primary computer IMO (but that's not what you are looking for). Cheap too, ranging from $250-$380

Dell Studio=PIMP

Pc's are great just make sure you have the best anti-virus and update it often.

Samsung n110 + ubuntu. Works for homework, works for tuning. It weighs around 2 pounds, 10 inch screen. Better quality, and cheaper than an Eeepc.

dude if its just to tune with get one of those cheap 10 inch notebooks and you can just keep it in the glovebox ftw. All you need realy to tune MS is the software wich is propietarily windows and a usb port.

there is way too much mac love in here. Really, around a 6.5 inch eee pc would be slick.

I got a like 8 year old 13 inch laptop for like $15, it works, but is slow as balls and doesent have a touchpad. But for the price...

Toshiba Libretto (ask me nicely and I will sell you mine):


http://www.lightweightmiata.com/beas.../airtemp01.JPG

I have a Dell and my wife has a Mac. Never had a problem with either of them but I have to say the Mac runs wayyyy smother and I wish I knew how to use it as good as my PC. If I had to go back in time I would buy a Mac.

I have an accer but I havent install my MS. Ill have updates after the weekend

ASUS Eee PC 900 16G XP 1gb 16gb SSD 8.9" EPC900B-BLU01X - eBay (item 280407519901 end time Nov-07-09 16:43:17 PST)

1G RAM, 16G SSD (no hard drive = no moving parts), 9" display, fits in glovebox. Same outer dimensions as the 7" Eee.

BIN = $190 w/ free shipping.


The $200 Dell A90 looks good too, so long as you stay disciplined and stick to the base model. (And hopefully you have an XP disc you can use to make the machine do something useful.)

I'm kinda surprised, actually. I'd not seen that one before. Never figured Dell would jump on the ultracheap netbook bandwagon.


In fact, forget my recommendation for the Eee. Buy the Dell.

I vote for the eeePC as well... I have had one for a little while, then the screen took a shit on me. Went to have it replaced and was out of stock so they just refunded my money. Worked great when it worked. Easy to upgrade the RAM to 2GB as well.

Thanks guys! Looks like its gonna be the eeepc. I'm just trying to decide on the 8" or 10" screen. Hopefully I will be buying one within the hour and have it here by next weds!

Seems that some of them come with a 4hr battery or a 8hr battery. I'm debating whether or not I really need a 8hr battery on this bitch.

After reading some reviews I have decided on the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-VU1X-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - 8.5 Hour Battery Life
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...X0DER&v=glance

Seems like its going to be small as fuck, but I'll trust you guys on this one. :)

I would check to make sure the MS screen fits well... I have heard that some computers don't have the FULL screen and you have to scroll over to see some information. I think there was a thread on it somewhere on here. As I was going to run Motec, I loaded the software and checked it out and everything looked good on my end. And get the 10"...

See, I told you you'd make the wrong decision... Shoulda got a Dell. :D

Seriously, though: If this is genuinely a machine for the car, stick with the 8.9" screen. I bought a 10" machine last year, and it's surprisingly large relative to the interior of my car. Yes, you get a better keyboard, but you're probably not doing a lot of typing while you drive.

Oh, and yes- I have personally verified that MegaTune works fine in 800x480 (which is the rez of the 8.9" screen on the Eee.) The Dell, despite the same physical size, runs at 1024x600, which is more than enough.

my gf just switched from mac, she got annoyed of having her hands tied since nothing runs on macs. Now shes actually happy to use a computer because so much more crap runs on it such as new very very good games and programs. I am using a cheap ol laptop that i got from a teacher back in highschool when they got upgraded. That thing has 64mb ram 3xxz cpu and 6 gigs of hard drive but for tunning my xede and few lightweight games, it runs like a champ especially since back then they had the serial 9 pin outputs. :)

If you want to use your computer for anything else than to watch porn on the web and perhaps draw, go with pc.

As far as battery goes, radioshack has a sale of dc to ac for 30 bucks.. very light weight with a fan inside and worth every penny since it also has usb output so you can charge stuff via usb

Same computer I am using. Works great. Just keep XP on it, dont install win7. Youll lose a huge amount of battery life if you do.

Same, I love my eeepc.

win 2k pro for the win :)

Thread summary...

OP Response OP .

Response OP :facepalm: :bowrofl:

way to go vash you made the move i have been wanting to make for a while those little machines are just the ticket to tune with imo. If you like i could post you some pics of how i permanently installed a 12v-120 inverter to my car and mounted it on the parcel shelf so my laptop nvr needs to worry about power.

btw i know this bs stuff was floating around the miata forum..

NO IF THE INVERTER IS RATED 350 WATTS, IT DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL PULL 350 WATTS EVERY TIME ITS PLUGGED IN. If you have something that pulls 350 watts plugged in then it will pull 350 watts but otherwise if you have a laptop plugged in or something it will only pull whatever it needs to supply that laptop.

Mine pulls less than 1/4th of an amp when i dont have anything plugged in.

You can get inexpensive power adapters that plug into the cigarette lighter. No need for an inverter, just snip the end off the car adapter and hard-wire it behind the dash.

Someone really thought a 350 Watt inverter pulled 350 Watts all the time?! Must not be an Engineer :giggle:

lol here is my thread... i ask a question about wiring and so forth, everybody starts telling me why it would NOT work lol

Remove cd player > replace it with an amp and use portable mp3 player > stock wiring? - MX-5 Miata Forum

yeah but i like mine has 2 plug ins and an on/off switch and is rated for 500 watts cant beat that wired up with some 10 gauge wire it's out of the way and uber usefull.

lol if you tell me where i can find a mini fridge that will fit in the trunk i'll get a 500 watts converter too... :P it would be nice to have cold beer any time i want.. stop at the light pop the trunk pull out a beer and go back and drive :D

i got it back when i was messing around with a electric supercharger concept for my nissan. I essentialy took a 500 cfm rated leaf blower and wired it in to work on my ka24 it worked but it killed the alternator i could hear the fucker overworking on the laod. So the project was scrapped. But the invertor remained and i put it to use. no sense in letting the 50$ investment go to waste. :P

ii'm glad you brought that up lol. I was actually planning on running a remote control gasoline buggy motor to the coldside of a turbocharger with a 5:1 gear ratio..

that gear should bring it up to 100k since those things do 15-20k rpm
I've seen air plane motors do 35k rpm easily

Imagine 0 lag, always full boost :P Think of what your miata would do on auto crossing with a flat curve of a 350.

not quite while i actualy got a 20-30 whp kick from the blower it was unsustanable and i gained a total of maybe 20 lbs doing it so your idea is wildly more impractical than that. Just get off you ass and put a real snail on your miata and you will be fine.

well with the battery yes, it stinks but if you have another motor just for the turbocharger.. you'll be good to run :) i'll try to install my snail tomorrow btw :D wish me luck that i dont rip off head bolts :) If i can remove the stock header the rest of the install should go pretty smoothly.. i hope :)

Leaf Blower Bolt on Dyno pull - Car Videos on StreetFire
proof from another source no less it works i did mine in 2004 though so they copied me btw lol

well a leaf blower is a whole another principle. A leaf blower is mainly made for air flow with maximum of 1 psi.. a turbo on the other hand is made to compress air to much more than 1 psi.. using a blower to compress air is like using a fork to eat soup.

There was another guy (i believe it was a nissan maxima) that had installed a twinscrew supercharger with an electric motor powering it and that thing was putting out 10 psi at idle and was going down to about 8 at full boost.

yep lol still the shit you try when you are broke and have shit laying around oh and a supply of duct tape helps a they on as well. :magna: hey vash post up some pics when you score a sweet pc man i wanna see :vash:

haha back when i bought my 1st car i actually bought one of those electric turbos from ebay :) made a nice fan for my old computer. :)

When i turned on my computer the fan would go on at full "boost" it sounded like a jet fighter taking off.

I didn't buy it yet, but it seems like the EeePC is the way to go. I would rather not give dell anymore money than I already have (long story), so anything dell isn't something I'll jump for.

I have never heard of EeePC's before, but after reading alot of reviews on amazon it seems to be exactly what I need to tune the car. And I could use it for my ebay stuff while I'm out working with clients.

I'll update this thread when I get it this week. Magna, if you wanna hook me up with that info that would be awesome! :bigtu:

I am using a Samsung NC-10 and quite happy with it. Won a lot of tests against the EEE.

I have an Eee PC for my tuning laptop and am happy with it. But any decent netbook should do the job nicely. I think it is a good way to go since they are cheap, compact, and have great battery life. The tuning apps are not very demanding of the processor.

I've used several Eee machines. They're fairly cheap (construction-wise) but they do work.

For a dedicated CarPC, if you're married to the idea of getting an Eee, I strongly recommend trying to find one of the 901 series. They seem to be discontinued, but they use a solid-state disk (instead of a hard drive) and so far as I know, have the smallest external form factor of any of the netbooks other than the Sony Vaio P (which is just ludicrously small.)

I have a cheap laptop I got off ebay years ago for the emanage and it worked for what I needed it for, but the battery couldn't hold a charge and it was just overall junk. Now that I'm going to spend the coin getting a newer one, I feel like I should get something I could use for work as well.

The only reason I am rushing this is so I can have the software for MS installed and have the computer communicating with the MS before I get to the dyno. The guy said everything I can do to save time will save me money. But at the same time I don't want to rush into getting something that I didn't research enough.

Still going to do some more reading before I actually buy it. But I hope to order it by the end of the day. :)

I've got the eeePC too. I'm running HP tuners for the LSX ECU. Having the 6 cell or better battery is great. I use it for playing videos when I travel. Can handle a long flight without charging. I just download torrents or rip my movies to the hard drive. If it's not living in the Miata, get one with a hard drive.

The wireless is great too. I can sit in my garage or basement with my router upstairs in the corner computer room and still download crap off the net or check forums while sitting in my car.

Frank

an option:
 

I picked up a Dell Mini 10v (atom netbook) on Dell's outlet site (outlet.dell.com). 1gb/120gb 1yr warranty delivered for $215. It's now dual booting XP and Mac OS 10.6 (mydellmini.com) and as stable as any Mac I own(ed). I've yet to find the 1024x600 screen an issue for anything.

Over the weekend I found one of the newer acer aspire one 751's with the 11.6" screen. Got it for $250 shipped. They run like 4-500 new, so not a bad deal even if its slightly used.

In hopes to order one already, I keep reading and reading which is only making the decision harder. So far its looking like the EeePC is the one, but I'm not 100% sold just yet, just because its over the $300 mark.

What do you say about this HP? Happens to be the ebay deal of the day at $239. I don't mind refurbed at all BTW. I prefer to save money where I can. :)

HP Mini 1030NR FW376UA Netbook PC 1.6GHz, 1GB, 16GB SSD - eBay (item 230389064792 end time Oct-21-09 07:39:19 PDT)

that seems kinda high i have seen the hp's selling for the 250 range retail i would check your local stores man you can probly get a better deal than 300 something. They are all good buys vash you just need to find the one with the best price point and features you need ie usb, wireless, and a SS hd if possible to make it more robust when dealing with droping and shaking issues. It doesnt have to be fast to run MS, or have a ton of HD space. 16 Gigs is more than overkill realy unless you plan on storing a media library and all kinds of apps on it.

This is what I was just thinking about. I will use it for tuning the car, but will probably use it more for work. Work stuff though is all online or simple programs like word, excel, and photo programs. I might want to keep some music on it, but I doubt I would want to fuck around with putting any movies on it.

So given that info, do you think I'm better off with the HP's smaller 16gb SSD or the EeePC's 160gb HD? That's pretty much the only differences I'm running into now. I want the 10in screen, 1gb of memory is fine, and I just need usb ports and I should be all set. Difference is either $239 for the HP or $319 for the EeePC.

yeah the small one will be fine if you feel the need you can just store only a few gigs of media on the laptop with the rest in your desktop till you want more. Its not like you are doing video editing etc with the thing so you will be fine 1 gig of pictures and a years worth of work orders and job forms might add up to 2-3 gigs depending on how busy you are. The lil usb stick hd's are cheap now as well and if you have a card reader on baord the SD cards are also hella cheap now. no reason for the bigger drive without running vista and a ton of other BS.

Should I even start reading about things like the Atom processor or DDR2 memory?

I'm about 1 click away from ordering the HP for $239. That's pretty much what I wanted to spend and it seems like it fits the bill. And your totally right about still having a desktop, its not like I'm going to need to put everything I have on here on there. Any final words of wisdom? :)

I just noticed that the HP's battery life is rated for 3.5 hours where the EeePC is rated for 8.5.

If you don't mind a refurb:

mwave.com: REFURBISHED - SYSTEMS Blow Out Sales - Refurbished

Frank

I don't mind a refurb, but they didn't have the model I was looking for.

Instead of losing more time (and money) on making a simple decision I went with the EeePC 1005HA from Amazon. This way if I have any issues I know Amazon will give me the customer support I need.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'll update this wednesday once I get it. :) I hope I don't regret it!

EeePC is here! I haven't had time to fuck with it too much besides setting up the wireless and downloading the Megatune software. So far so good!

It's just as fast as my other computer as far as online stuff goes. Nice and lightweight, looks good as well. Only thing is the screen is a bit small, hurts my eyes coming from a wide screen Samsung monitor. But other than that it looks like it fits the bill for what I need. :)

good shit:D

Yeah, you know what else that means right? :)

I helped the UPS driver load your wheels into the truck, so they are on the way!

Can't wait to get my car back on the road with this hardtop and rims:)
I'll be starting to put everything back in on Sat so it will be soon. CAN'T WAIT

Just wanted to update this and say thus far the computer has been great. I highly recommend this EeePC to anyone in the market for a netbook or tuning laptop.

I got it setup to 3 different wireless networks with zero issues, also got my programs I use to list auctions setup and tested them. Everything runs fairly fast and smooth with no issues. Battery life is awesome! I'm so glad I went with this and not the HP. After a couple hours of use I still had 75% left. My only problem I have with it is the touch pad. Sometimes it likes to fuck me up, but over time I think I'll get more used to the way it works.

Next thing on the list is this mount. I really like that it has a quick disconnect so I can take it apart when I don't need it. Not only will this be good for my tuning needs, but for work.