Laptop for FRC Labview: Recommendation Wanted

[Foster]

Summary: I'm looking for a low cost, but decent performing laptop for Labview training.

We are going to start training on Labview for our team. I'd like to be able to get some laptops for the students to use. The system specs from NI say Pentium with 1GB of memory and a screen with 1024 x 768 pixels as a recommended system.

Systems like the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 with the 1.3 Ghz Atom looks like they will fit in that spec range. Some of the other mini-books only have 1024*600 displays, so that excludes them. I'm also thinking that the 9" screens will be a problem with complex Labview programs.

Does anyone have any experience with the Atom based laptops running Labview?

I'm also looking at systems that are going to be able to stand up to a seasons worth of use (and abuse) programming. My experiences has been that the real cheap laptops come apart at the hinges or that the cases crack. I don't want to replace them next year.

Any laptop recommendations?

[Lowfategg]

May I ask why you are looking a mini laptops? Most of the time they are not recommended for programming purely because of screen size. 9" is tiny even if the resolution is great, I would at least get something like 14.1" display.

Also, price wise you can pick up a good 15.4" laptop for around $400-500 (put your money into the CPU and ram).

[Joe Ross]

I've run LabVIEW on an ASUS EeePC 1000HD. The celeron processor is similar in speed to an Atom, and is on the slow end for LabVIEW, but not too bad. The screen resolution is the biggest problem for a graphical language like LabVIEW.

The other problem with the cheap netbooks is small flash hard drives. The FRC LabVIEW install requires 3.6 gigs of space, which means the ones with 4 gig drives won't work.

I agree that the cases of many cheap laptops don't handle a lot of abuse. However, you can get Dell Latitudes (the corporate line) for less then $700 which should hold up better. The Dell Inspiron 1525's hinges and case feel better then the Dell Inspiron 1405 that I bought 2 years ago, so they may be improving.