Drive station laptop requirements

[SargeUSMC]

Recommendations for a solid drive station laptop that's fat & fast enough for this application:

OS
Processor type? Speed?
RAM?

Any input would be appreciated.

Semper Fi!

[JesseK]

We're using a Lenovo Flex 2. I replaced the hard drive, and all of its crummy Lenovo b/s, with a 128 GB Samsung EVO SSD and fresh Windows 8.1.

It reboots in under 5 seconds, which is key sometimes if the hibernation/sleep state gets kludged up. You'll also want to change power settings to 'do nothing when the lid is closed' and 'never sleep or hibernate', then 'pressing the power button does nothing'. That should take care of a lot of the common boot/power issues with driver's station laptops in general. You'll probably also want to go into mouse settings, Synaptics Settings and get rid of gestures that could interfere with you scrambling to do things at the start of a match (such as swipe in from edge of screen).

This laptop runs the OpenCV vision stuff we throw at it with ease, and has touch if we go big with a UI again next year. 1080p screen is also a plus for the programmers and their quick debugging desires.

If you have a Windows 8.1 disc, the 8.1 product key is detected as a string in this laptop's BIOS, meaning you shouldn't have to re-purchase a license. However, we had an official Windows disc for this to work - I don't know if the digital version works (such as what some educational institutions get through MSDNAA).

The original hard drive, and all of its Lenovo crumminess, will be formatted and used as a mobile data drive in a USB enclosure.

It was pretty tough to find a lightweight, high battery-life laptop with a DVD drive, 3 USB prots and an Ethernet port. The ports should also be on your spec lists for a driver's station, IMO. USB-Ethernet dongles and USB hubs are finicky if they're mishandled, which is easy to do in our competition environment.

[SargeUSMC]

Ya, that's the problem we have. Ethernet ports and USB ports are getting hammered. Does the computer need to have a serial port at all?

[JesseK]

As far as I know, the laptops don't need a serial port these days. Many of the workstation-grade or business-grade laptops still have them because they're used to interface with custom hardware, or some U1 servers which have a separate redundant BIOS mode. Unless you're doing some of that, or hooking up to a nifty input device, I don't think they're necessary.

[ILAMtitan]

We are using an 11" Acer Aspire: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MNOPS1C/

Once the junk (which it didn't really have much of) was removed, it runs the DS software without any issues. I think during a match the CPU commit went up to maybe 50%.

The battery lasts about 8 hours, there are no moving parts so you can toss it around and not really care, and it has an Ethernet port and several USB ports. It's even low cost enough that at the end of the season we can just pack the whole OI panel (it has custom buttons and the like) away with the robot so that it's ready to go for demo days.

In regards to serial (RS-232) ports, just use a USB<->RS-232 cable like this one: http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-USB-R...dp/B0007T27H8/
I use them a lot for work, and they are perfect for flashing the Jags or interfacing with the old cRios.