Why not use the Classmate?
 

This may be a dumb question, but...

Why use a laptop over a classmate? Is there that much of an advantage in processor speed and RAM? My initial impression is that everything is limited by the wireless cards and the field servers. Is there a large advantage in using an old dual core laptop with 4GB of Ram?

Thanks for any input.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

It makes a HUGE for our team. It's so helpful for us to have the increased battery life, screen size, RAM, CPU speed, etc. It's now possible for us to store code on the driver station and edit/deploy it really quickly at competition.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

Our team used the old, first model Classmates last year. We had such a bad experience with it that we're using my laptop this year for everything.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

We used to use the old Classmate computers, but we got a dual core 4GB ram computer for our coders and use that as the drive station computer. This way all code and programs needed, etc. can all be in one place, esp for changes at competition when you don't have internet connections and can forget thumbdrives, etc.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

The classmates are a good option for basic play. But if you are doing more advanced vision processing, multiple cameras, or more than the average, an Ultrabook is the route to go. You don't have to log in and out of a user to use a DS. The list goes on.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

Thanks for the input.

We'll have to buy a new battery for an old Dell dual core. of course I've seen some posts about using a Raspberry for onboard vision processing.

Re: Why not use the Classmate?
 

If you are just running the drive station & not a lot of other processing IE vision or lots of widgets on smart dashboard, it does not matter.

If you use the DS for programming or vision, you are better off with something faster.

Personally I like the programmers having to use a different computer to deploy code. That way I know when it is happening & can brick their computer if need be. :]