[FrankJ]

For driver stations without heavy vision processing, I have been buying small laptops with a 802.11 A wireless card. Generally the B, G, N specs are included in a new wireless card that comes with A. The A spec insures the 5 gig band that is less crowded in public areas than the 2.4 band. The DS and dashboard aren't really hardware intensive. Laptops with this spec can be found in the $250-$350 price range. The few we have bought have been Acers, but other brands are equally good.

It is best to keep the driver station laptop completely clean software wise. Software Developers like to put code it start up that help their program to run faster & check for updates. This stuff can cause sporadic com issues with the robot that is hard to diagnose. For the same reason it is better to have a separate computer for programing.