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From experience, programming in Open CV means you have to handle the (in)stability issues in the program or you'll lose your vision processing. I tried Open CV this year but had some null pointer issues running some of the libraries. This occured with some particularly noisy images.

That said, there is still an advantage to running vision processing on the robot in terms of reduced bandwidth requirements and reduced lag. The question becomes, does the advantage make up for this complexity? For 2014, I'm considering purchasing a sub $400 windows tablet and installing labview on it to run video processing on. Less than one pound of weight and about 1/4" thick.

Regardless, I recomend purchasing a new laptop if you can afford it. I do not like the classmates from a cost or durability perspective. I replaced our driverstation in 2012 with an i7 laptop for about the same price as a new classmate would cost, but with about an order of magnitude more computing power.