[cbale2000]

For me the bigger question is, why doesn't FIRST just ditch the cRio and go with laptop controlled robots?

All it would take is a USB motor controller + I/O board (and since we already have FIRST-specific electronics that ship with the cRio, I don't see this as being a huge issue) and almost any laptop and you have a control system that can be easily upgraded/updated, has an independent backup battery (no worries about power loss on your controller), can be programmed in virtually any language, can run vision processing without eating network bandwidth, and, depending on what you get, can be cheaper and have more features than the cRio.